Fire Risk and Vulnerability of Austrian Forests under the Impact of Climate Change

Global warming will cause increasing danger of wildfires in Austria which can have long-lasting consequences on woodland ecosystems. The protective effect of forest can be severely reduced leading to natural hazards like avalanches and rockfall. Nevertheless data on wildfire frequency and distribution is currently still sparse and incomplete for Austria and long-lasting postfire degradation under adverse preconditions (e.g. very steep slopes) is a possible phenomenon which is currently widely neglected. In our project FIRIA we intend to compile historical wildfire data including information on fuel loads, fire weather indices (FWI) and recovery. Thereby we aim at assessing the governing climatic and socio-economic factors of forest fire distribution including fire vulnerability of different woodland communities and will model and display the spatial distribution of currently fire-prone areas in Tyrol. Furthermore, we will assess the impact of climate change on the distribution and frequency of fires. Finally, we will locate areas of enhanced natural hazards after wildfire driven deforestation and infrastructure at risk using process models, and work out a catalogue of possible countermeasures.