Spatial Variability of Forest Fires in the Polish Voivodeships in the Period of 2009-2018

The article deals with the issue of forest fire risk and regional differentiation of this phenomenon in Poland. A set of indicators characterizing forest fires in voivodeships (equivalent of provinces) was developed, including: area indicators, variability indicators, 10-year indicators, normalized indicators and a synthetic indicator. The study is based on the data for the years 2009-2018 provided by the Local Data Bank. Assessment of the severity of forest fires phenomena in the analysed period was presented. The results of the assessment were compared to theoretically designated fire risk categories. Areas where the actual number of fires, average area and the burned area were adequate to the forecasted degree of fire risk were indicated. Additionally, the obtained results allowed to identify the voivodeships where the characteristics of forest fires for the analysed period differed from the forest fire risk degree found in the literature. This indicates the complex nature of the phenomenon resulting from, inter alia, large variability of factors that determine the occurrence of forest fires. An example of such a situation is the Lubuskie Voivodeship which is assigned to the medium fire risk category, while the actual intensity was found to be low. Another example is the Podkarpackie Voivodeship with a medium and low fire risk, where over the past 10 years the intensity of the phenomenon was high