One of the goals of the GFMC is to develop a global dataset on wildland fires for science and policy development support. A preliminary multi-year global database of vegetation fires for use in climate modelling has been established by the GFMC by the support of the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research in the frame of the German Climate Research Programme DEKLIM (BMBF 01 LD 0105). This dataset is not yet published. A complementary statistical enquiry is the GFMC Global Wildland Fire Assessment which currently is in a premature and developing stage.

Links to the published global, regional and national fire reports which include wildland fire statistics are provided in the following:

FAO Global Fire Assessments

The FAO Global Forest Fire Assessment 1990-2000 is part of the FAO Forest Resources Assessment 2000 (FRA-2000), published online (PDF) as Working Paper No. 55 (495 p.). The global fire assessment includes statistical data from a large number of countries. The assessment has been prepared by Johann G. Goldammer (Global Fire Monitoring Center) and Robert W. Mutch (Fire Management Applications).

Within the FAO Forest Resources Assessment 2005 (FRA-2005) a regional reports on forest fires were written by representatives of the Regional Wildland Fire Networks and are available on the regional web pages of the UNISDR Global Wildland Fire Network and the FAO web page at the GFMC.

Regional Fire Databases

The First Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe took place in Strasbourg/France in December 1990. Under the impression of increasing threats to European forests, the participants of the Conference recognised the need for cross-border protection and agreed on a General Declaration and six Resolutions. These Strasbourg Resolutions initiated a broad scientific and technical co-operation throughout Europe. Moreover, the Strasbourg Conference was a major step in initiating the incorporation of scientific data into political action for the protection of European Forests. One of the six resolutions addressed the establishment of a Decentralized European Data Bank on Forest Fires:

Resolution S3: Decentralized European Data Bank on Forest Fires

The fire statistics are collected and evaluated by the UN-ECE Timber Section Committee / European Forestry Commission, Geneva. The statistics include all Western and Eastern European countries, countries of the former Soviet Union, the U.S.A. and Canada. The statistics can be obtained via

http://www.unece.org/trade/timber/ff-stats.html

The last data set covers the period 1999-2001:

UNECE/FAO 2002. Forest fire statistics 1999-2001. Timber Bulletin, Vol. LV (2002), ECE/TIM/BULL/2002/4, New York, Geneva.

The report can be downloaded as EXCEL fire (418 KB) directly here:

http://www.unece.org/trade/timber/ff-stats/99-01/99-01.xls

The UNECE 2004 ICP Executive Report The Condition of Forests in Europe (Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution: International Co-operative Programme on Assessment and Monitoring of Air Pollution, Effects on Forests) contains a fire summary on p. 32-35:

2004 ICP Executive Report The Condition of Forests in Europe (PDF, 5.7 MB)

European Commission

EU Fire Database

The Regulation EEC No 804/94 (now expired) established a Community system of information on forest fires for which a systematic collection of a minimum set of data on each fire occurring, the so-called Common Core, had to be carried out by the Member States participating in the system. According to the currently in force Forest Focus regulation (EC) No 2152/2003, concerning monitoring of forests and environment interactions in the Community, the forest fire common core data should continue to be recorded and notified in order to collect comparable information on forest fires at Community level. The forest fire data are therefore provided each year by individual Member States, checked, stored and managed by JRC within EFFIS. At present the database covers seven Member States of the Union with fire-risk areas: Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece (data available from 1985 to 2001), Germany (1994-2001) and Cyprus (2000-2001). The public access to the database currently allows the users to retrieve general information such as maps of the number of fires for a selected year and for the countries for which data are available. Further analysis possibilities will be added in the near future.

Reports published by the European Commission provide statistical data for Southern Europe:

Report No. 1 Forest Fire in Southern Europe (July 2001) (PDF file, 0.9 MB)
Report No. 2 Forest Fires in Europe 2001 Fire Campaign (July 2002) (PDF file, 2.1 MB)
Report No. 3 Forest Fires in Europe 2002 Fire Campaign (published 2003) (PDF, 6.5 MB)
Report No. 4 Forest Fires in Europe 2003 Fire Campaign (published 2004) (PDF, 10.5 MB)
Report No. 5 Forest Fires in Europe 2004 (published 2005) (PDF, 2.4 MB)
Report No. 6 Forest Fires in Europe 2005 (published 2006) (PDF, 3.2 MB)
Report No. 7 Forest Fires in Europe 2006 (published 2007) (PDF, 3.5 MB)
Report No. 8 Forest Fires in Europe 2007 (published 2008) (PDF, 3.4 MB)

National Databases

National statistics on forest fires and other vegetation fires have been collected by the GFMC from about 70 nations since the end of the 1980’s. The statistics are included in reports published in the pages of UN-FAO/ECE International Forest Fire News (IFFN). For fire statistics by country: See IFFN Country Notes (1990 – 2001).