Long term dynamic of forest fires in Ukraine

Climate and land use change, increased forest attendance by the population have caused a significant exacerbation of the forest fires problem and their consequences for the society and the environment, both globally and regionally. The large forest fires that took place during the last decade showed increase of vulnerability of forests to fires. In particular, two major forest fires in the Chornobyl exclusion zone, which in 2015 burnt over a total area of about 14.9 thousand hectares, as well catastrophic fires with many casualties that occurred in 2016-2018 in Australia, California, Germany, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Sweden. This situation shows the need to pay more attention to the problem of forest fires, in particular in Ukraine where the system of fire management is in its initial stage of formation. The developed countries of the world have developed and implemented the concept of an integrated fire management system, the content of which is to combine traditional methods of fire prevention and suppression with the wide involvement of the population, local authorities and industry in addressing this problem, using new technologies and clear principles and objectives of forest fire policy. Nowadays, an outdated approach to fire management functions in Ukraine, in which all responsibility for forest fire management is taken by foresters who, in modern conditions, are not in a position to cope with this problem on their own. The first step towards establishing a modern fire management system in Ukraine and transition to an integrated system should aim at establishing a reliable national fire statistics system, which is currently imperfect and has several shortcomings. The availability of complete, reliable official statistical information on forest fires will enable carrying out an adequate analysis of the fire regimes at the territorial level and developing a better system under the modern fire challenges. The analysis of number and area of forest fires that took place on the territory of Ukraine for the period from 1990 to 2017, and fire hazard of forests is presented in the paper. A system of collecting statistical information on forest fires is analyzed and a comparative assessment of the indicators of fire statistics of Ukraine, Republic of Belarus and Poland has been carried out.