Forest fires in Siberia and East Russia 2021

Summer forest fires in Siberia and East Russia is a comprehensive topic, which is frequently left
unnoticed. Serious harmful fires had been happening there every year since summer 2019 and
repeated more intensively in year 2021. The situation is complicated with the composition of the
forests.
The wildfire started in July 2021 and had been stopped only in October 2021. Burning areas were
mainly localized, however they were not put out due to the completeness of the burning. This is the
first time in history of records, when the fire smoke reached the North Pole.
The causes of forest fires in Siberia are multiple. First, scientists note the trend of changes in the
General background of temperatures in the Siberian region and the development of a trend of
increasing the number of forest fires (Feurdeanab et al., 2020). Secondly, the Siberian forest is boreal
forest. This means that the trees in the forest are rich in resin, and the soil is rich in peat. This, in turn,
increases the intensity and area of spread of accidental fires (Feurdeanab et al.,2020). This fact makes
these fires much harder to observe, since peat is burning under the surface and can burn during rain.
In addition, coniferous trees are known for high resin concentration, which sometimes forms resin
swamps. Such conditions are leading to the enormous fires, that are nearly impossible to put out and
following high CO emissions, affecting all the environment nearby.
For exploring the wildfire scales, Google Earth Engine was used. My approach was to locate sources
of fire and to estimate how and which areas were affected. I began with a Sentinel-2 imagery in True
color. The result gave me understanding on amounts of smoke emissions and I could even spot some
of the burning sources(layer ‘True Color’). It is already can be noticed that fire starts in middle Siberia
and expands to the very East side of Russia.
My next idea was to check the surface temperatures. For these purposes I selected MODIS Terra
dataset. However, the peat fire slightly affects surface temperature, since it is happening underneath
and also the summer in Siberia is warm. Solution to that is to look at night surface temperature data.
Now the temperature differences can be spotted and we can even see some really intense fires, which
I believe are resin swamps burning(layer ‘Surface temperature(Night)’). MODIS Terra also has a great
and very precise dataset on thermal anomalies and fires. It helps to conclude on fire presence and the
scales of that fire(layer ‘Anomalies and Fire’).
Peat is burning with a lot of CO emission and considering the large scale of fires these emissions
become very dangerous. Using Sentinel-5 data on aerosols and pollutants, I mapped the CO
concentration during July 2021(layer ‘CO’). It showed extreme values near burning areas. The wind
bring smoke to the North and West directions and it affects more places polluting the air.
The last idea was to check on vegetation and see how strongly these fires affected forests vegetation.
Corresponding Sentinel-2 bands combination was used, and as expected we can notice areas with
dead vegetation. Large forest fires also cause significant tree stand loss, as well as the removal of
ground vegetation and organic matter (Kirdyanov et al, 2020).
These areas match ‘Anomalies and Fire’ layer very well. Based on that it can be said that the fire was
mainly localized, but couldn’t be stopped due to the peat high burning potential.

Comparing to the last years wildfire, it can be concluded that the situation is getting worse, whereas
not much attention had been paid to this issue. Besides air pollution, vegetation and wildlife dying,
and affecting people living around, additional point on this disaster is destruction of peat deposits,
which is very precious for the agriculture and as a fuel. I hope this problem will catch more attention
from specialists, then fires can be predicted and stopped from further destroying Siberian and Far
East environment.

References:
1. Angelica Feurdeanab, Gabriela Florescucd, Ioan Tanţăue, Boris Vannièref, Andrei-Cosmin Diaconue,
Mirjam Pfeifferb, Dan Warrenb, Simon M.Hutchinsong, Natalia Gorinah, Mariusz Gałkai, Sergey
Kirpotinj. Recent fire regime in the southern boreal forests of western Siberia is unprecedented in the
last five millennia. Quaternary Science Reviews. Volume 244, 15 September 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106495
2. Alexander V Kirdyanov, Matthias Saurer, Rolf Siegwolf, Anastasia A Knorre, Anatoly S Prokushkin,
Olga V Churakova (Sidorova), Marina V Fonti and Ulf Büntgen. Long-term ecological consequences of
forest fires in the continuous permafrost zone of Siberia. 6 March 2020. Environmental Research
Letters, Volume 15, Number 3. IOP Publishing Ltd.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab7469/meta