Evaluating fire management effectiveness with a burn probability model in Daxing'anling, China

Fire is an important disturbance agent in the boreal forests of China. The aggressive fire suppression policy of China since 1988 has resulted in a large financial investment in support of fire brigade capabilities and the maintenance of fire management infrastructure. We developed a spatially explicit burn probability (BP) model to evaluate the effectiveness of improved fire management in Daxing’anling, China. The BP model can emulate the burn probability of the forest landscape by simulating daily wildfire occurrences, spread, and suppression for simulated years. Two scenarios were used for fire simulations in this study. The base scenario used the infrastructure data and parameters of fire suppression capability from the 1968–1987 period, and the intensive scenario used the data and parameters from the 1988–2012 period. The simulated annual burned areas for 1968–2012 showed a fluctuating trend similar to the historical fire records. Compared with the base scenario, the burn probability decreased by 73.6% under the intensive scenario, which suggests that improved fire management could significantly reduce the burn probability. This study shows that the BP model can model the effects of fire management activities on the forest landscape level and evaluate the effectiveness of fire management strategies or management measures.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author