Extreme forest fires
Globally, human fatalities, health impacts and ecosystem degradation from intensifying wildfires are surging. Increases in fire disasters may stem from changing wildfire behaviour caused by climate warming, increasing exposure due to expanding human settlements, or changing vulnerability. A comprehensive, global wildfire risk assessment is currently lacking. Most of the damage from wildfires, including economic losses and impacts on human health, are caused by extremely large fires, that grow rapidly and are often synchronised with nearby fires. These fire event characteristics can potentially overwhelm firefighters and active fire suppression efforts, yet most assessments of fire impacts rely on pixel-based measurements of burned areas and fire severity.
Innovative global fire tracking system
Earth scientist Rebecca Scholten will create and apply an innovative global fire tracking system to generate sub-daily information defining the perimeter of actively growing wildfires. “I will use these “fire-object” data to inform a mechanistic understanding of what causes fires to grow into catastrophic “mega-fires” and to identify how and where changes in fire hazard are linked to a warming climate. Based on this, I will create an improved global assessment of contemporary and future wildfire risk, and identify regions and countries that can benefit most from investments to improve fire and ecosystem management,” she says.
Rubicon programme
Thanks to the Rubicon grant these young researchers can do their research at a foreign institute that offers the best environment for their research. The size of the grant depends on the destination chosen and the duration of the stay. Each year, NWO and ZonMw can fund about 60 young researchers within Rubicon (for a total amount of 7 million euros granted over three rounds). The awards in this news item concerns the first round of 2024.
Read more in the press release of NWO