Current forest fires in the Russian Federation

Forest Fires in the Russian Federation  

20 April 2015


 

Russia Wildfire Smoke Reaches California, Oregon and Washington (published by www.weather.com 20 April 2015)

Smoke from wildfires thousands of miles away in Russia reached the U.S. West Coast this past weekend (April 17-19).

Strong winds fanned agricultural fires in Siberia on April 12 that eventually got out of control. At least 23 people were killed and more than 1,000 homes were damaged or destroyed in southern Siberia.

In the first three images above you can see how satellites sensed the aerosols associated with the smoke as winds aloft transported them from eastern Russia to the north Pacific Ocean April 15-17. The blue, green, yellow and orange shadings illustrate where the aerosols were concentrated each day as they spread east.

The smoke reached Washington on April 17, as shown by the hazy conditions in the fifth image. Hazy skies were observed by residents of western Washington that day, as the National Weather Service in Seattle noted in this tweet.

Smoke from the Russian fires then spread southward near and either side of the Oregon and northern California coasts April 18-19. The smoke was clearly visible on satellite both days.

 

 

The blue, green, yellow and orange colors show the aerosols associated with the smoke in eastern Russia on April 15, 2015.
Source: NASA 

The blue, green, yellow and orange colors show the aerosols associated with the smoke spreading from eastern Russia to over the northwest Pacific Ocean on April 16, 2015.
Source: NASA

Smoke off the coast of Washington on April 17, 2015.
Source: NASA 

The green, yellow and orange shadings are showing the aerosols associated with the smoke off the coast of Washington on April 17, 2015.
Source: NASA

Several smoky fires burned in Zabaikalsky Territory on 14 April 2015, when theModerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this image. The fires are outlined in red. Several dark burn scars are visible through the smoke.
Source: NASA Earth Observatory

Fire maps of Zaibaikaski Krai, Russian Federation and Mongolian Border, 20 April 2015

Images of the fires ravaging Siberian region – 15 April 2015 (published by The Washington Post)

A man looks downhill at the settlement of Shyra, damaged by recent wildfires, in the Khakassia region.
Source:  Ilya Naymushin/Reuters

Burnt vehicles are seen in Shyra.
Source: Ilya Naymushin/Reuters

Family members walk past the debris of destroyed buildings.
Source: Ilya Naymushin/Reuters

Firefighters of the Federal Reserve gearing up for assisting local authorities in fighting remote wildfires in Chita.
Source: GFMC

Dashcamera of a vehicle driving through an area under severe fire conditions (Video: RT.com 17 April 2015)

Russian farmers routinely set fire to dry grass to clean fields after the winter, sometimes accidentally sparking blazes that result in loss of life and damage to homes.
During the first weeks of April 2015, grassfires have ravaged across the Siberian regions of Russia, killing 26 people and injuring almos a thousand.
The combination of temperatures reaching 25°C and high winds have fueled the fires that have destroyed buildings and killed livestock.
In 2010, during Russia’s worst heatwave in decades, smoke from wildfires and burning peat bogs in central Russia choked Moscow for several days.

 

Video showing part of the catastrophic fires in Russia, recorded by an eyewitness (Video: Julia Sergeeva)

12 April 2015

13 April 2015

Accumulated maps of thermoactive (burnt area) zones in Central Regions of Russia.
5 – 13 April, 2015

More maps of other regions are available on request: fire@fire.uni-freiburg.de

 

This image, captured on 14 April 2015 by theModerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard the Terra satellite, shows fires on the Russian regions of Buryatia, Chita
and Amur. The active fires appear as red dots. A large smoke plume can be spotted surrounding the whole region.

Source: Nasa Earth Observatory (image edited and interpreted by GFMC)

 

Image, captured on 13 April 2015 by theModerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard the Terra satellite, showing fires on Siberia, Russia. The right picture is the same as the left one on false color, showing the burn scars of the fires in red-brown. The active fires appear as red dots.
Source: Nasa Earth Observatory (image edited and interpreted by GFMC)

 Videos:
Fires in Siberia (published by http://actumag.info 16 April 2015)
Drone surveys fires in Siberia (published by http://actumag.info 16 April 2015)

 

WildlandFire relatednews from the Media: Note: The hyperlinks on the left side of each news are password-protected (User ID and password to enter the GFMC database are
available for partners of GFMC). The links on the right side (in brackets) are leading to the original news source; sometimes these news are expiring rather swiftly – a reason for the
establishment of the internal GFMC database):

For more media reports see GFMC Media page: https://gfmc.online/media-highlights-on-fire-policies-and-politics.html

Book Publication on the Use of Prescribed Fire in the Russian Federation (published May 2013)

Background on Wildland Fires in the Russian Federation

Bibliography on fire in ecosystems of boreal Eurasia
One of the results of the first international fire science conference in the Russian Federation (1993) was the publication of a monograph on fire in boreal Eurasia, including some selected contributions on boreal North America. The literature cited in the monograph contains numerous publications which in many cases are not easily accessible. To facilitate literature search the bibliographical sources are provided by topic (chapter).
Goldammer, J.G. and V.V. Furyaev. 1996. Fire in Ecosystems of Boreal Eurasia. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 390 p.


 

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