Are Climate Extremities Changing Forest Fire Regimes in India? An Analysis Using MODIS Fire Locations During 2003–2013 and Gridded Climate Data of India Meteorological Department

Abstract

The occurrence of forest fire in India, and their interrelationship with causal drivers i.e. climate (temperature, rainfall, dry-days, El Niño), fuel status (forest types, Normalised Difference Vegetation Index) and anthropogenic disturbances (distance from road and settlements, population density) were investigated. The Nino3 sea surface temperature index was used based on sea surface temperature anomalies recorded from February to June (fire season in India) through the years 2003–2013. This was used as the representative index of El Niño southern oscillations (ENSO). The correlations among different causal drivers and fire occurrence were investigated for the entire country and different bio-geographic zones within the country. In India, the forest fire were significantly (significance f < 0.05, confidence interval 95%) correlated with average dry-days (r 0.75) and maximum average temperature (r 0.76). It was further observed that El Niño increased the temperature and consequently the dryness, which created conducive conditions for fire to occur. The integrated fire frequency ratio, which is the ratio of percent of total fire occurrence in a particular driver class to the percent of total area of that driver class, was estimated for each year from 2003 to 2013 to investigate the fire susceptibility of different forests. The yearly fire frequency ratio was estimated to understand the dynamics of fire susceptibility across the country. The fire occurrence in Deccan Peninsula and the central Himalayas in particular were found to be more sensitive towards the climate anomalies.