US Stat

One of the goals of the GFMC is to provide and link access to fire statistics and data archives at national, regional and global level.

Since a Global Vegetation Fire Inventory (GVFI) is still in a premature and developing stage only a limited number of databases can be made accessible. At present we can link only to the database of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) which periodically collected and publishes fire statistics of the member states.

Global Fire Database

The FAO Global Forest Fire Assessment 1990-2000 is part of the FAO Forest Resources Assessment (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 J.G.Goldammer (The Global Fire Monitoring Center) and Robert W. Mutch (Fire Management Applications).

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 Trade Division, Timber Section, Geneva. The statistics include all Western and Eastern European countries, countries of the former Soviet Union, the U.S.A. and Canada. The last data set covers the period 1995-97 (ECE/FAO 1998). The statistics can be obtained via: http://www.unece.org/trade/timber/ff-stats.html
ECE/FAO 1998. Forest fire statistics 1995-1997. Timber Bulletin, Vol.LI (1998), No.4. ECE/TIM/BULL/51/4, New York, Geneva, 19 p.

The Commission of the European Communities, on the basis of Council Regulation (EEC) No 2158/92 of 23 July 1992 on protection of the Community’s forests against fire (1) in 1994 decided that Member States must at least collect a set of data consisting of fire statistical information, comparable at community level and accessible at specified regular intervals, hereinafter called ‘the minimum core of information on forest fires’. The database is not publicly accessible. Rationale and principles of the database, however, are described in Commission Regulation (EC) No 804/94 of 11 April 1994. Community legislation document 394R0804 is given at: http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/lif/dat/1994/en_394R0804.html

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

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).