Wildfires and prescribed burning in Finland

177 Pages·2014·8.52 MB·English

Wildfires and prescribed burning 
in Finland
, Riga 4.12.2014
Henrik Lindberg, HAMK University of Applied 
Sciencies
• 1) About the general situation of forest fires in Finland ‐ The efficency of firefighting institutions. 
The percentage and affected hectarage of unplanned, peoplece caused, malicios forestfires; 
naturall, lightning caused forestfires, and percentage of prescribed burning actions during the last
decade or so.
• 2) Percentage of the fire use for forestry needs and for nature conservation needs. Examples of fire
use for forestry needs and for nature conservation needs.
• 3) The planning process for prescribed burning in Natura 2000 territories. 
• How the territories are chosen, what kind of habitats are burnt. Who does the burning, etc.
• 4) How is the prescribed burning amounts planned? If there are many unplaned forest fires during
the year, does it affect the amount of prescribed burning, is it then done less than planned?
• 5) The learing process for forestry specialists ‐ study programmes, what is taught to them about fire
use in forests for forestry needs. wheter they study about fire use for nature conservation needs.
• 6) Who is responsible for firefighting in forests. Please describe the cooperation with firefighters if
there is one.
• 7) Legislation on the use of fire in forestry and nature conservation.
• 8)Scientific work, researches. Are they done on territories that have burnt unplanned, or the
scientific work is done only in territories where date are collected before the burning.
•
Presentation
• ”fire picture”
• Wildfires, their current fire regime and 
reasons for it 
• I`ll deal briefly:
– Fire history
– Historic use of fire (e.g slash‐and‐burn)
• Forest fire fighting (organisation)
Controlled/prescribed burnings
• Silvicultural burnings
– Traditional silvicultural burnings
– Modified silvicultural burnings
• Nature management burnings
• Burning of retention trees
• Restoration burnings
• Impoverishment burnings
• Burning of cultural biotopes
• Example cases
• Research
• Legislation
• Training
• Development work
• conclusions
Quite a lot of stuff…
• I`ll run through slides quite rapidly and we will 
stay/concentrate on issues you find interesting
• So please ask/interrupt if needed
• I´ll deal with ”official” prescribed burnings
(mainly on forest land)
• There still are many ”wild burnings”, 
– Mainly in arable or semi arable land
– ”cleaning” areas by burning biomass
– Burning straws, leaves, twigs, branches etc.
– Fields, yards, road banks, meadows etc
– Private persons, springtime, common (especially
in certain areas)
Fire in Finland currently‐a fairly typical year 2011, with a 
total of roughly 1000 hectares burned area (1230) (total
forest land area of Finland:23/27 million hectares 0,00005 
)
%
Wildfires
Annual area burned in State forests
1870–1999. 
(Picture: Heikki Suvanto)
70 000
60 000
50 000
a 40 000
ri
a
a
t
h
e Tuntsa fire 1961
h 30 000
20 000
10 000
0
1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990
vuosi
Fire lookout towers and aeroplane
watch sytem
Forest fire committee 1925
10.12.2014 10