Economic Loss Assessment and Spatial–Temporal Distribution Characteristics of Forest Fires: Empirical Evidence from China

Abstract

Forest fires are a type of disaster with both human and natural factors; they differ from other forest disasters, in that they can cause significant damage not only to the ecological environments but also to the economy and society in many irreversible ways. While the risk factor of forest fires has been large, systematic studies on economic losses caused by forest fires have been lacking in recent years, and there is also a lack of analysis on forest fire economic losses in both spatial and temporal dimensions. Therefore, based on the forest fire data from 2006 to 2018, this paper establishes a forest fire economic loss evaluation system to calculate the economic losses in China and analyzes the spatial distribution characteristics and change trends of the forest fire economic losses in each province through thermal mapping. The results show the following. (1) The economic loss from forest fires in China is generally characterized by a fluctuating decline, but anomalous values due to human factors may occur. (2) The spatial heterogeneity of economic loss in China’s provinces is limited by many factors, such as the differences in resource endowments, showing the characteristics of “low in the eastern and western regions and high in the central region”. (3) Forest fires in China cause the most serious losses to forest ecological benefits. (4) Forest resources and fires are not independent of each other between regions, and areas with similar economic losses related to forest fires are often found in blocks. (5) Although the overall economic losses caused by forest fires in China are fluctuating and decreasing, some provinces are showing signs of increasing economic losses, most notably in Inner Mongolia. Therefore, this paper suggests targeted recommendations based on forest fires in different regions and with reference to the changing trends of economic loss caused by forest fires. For low-loss areas, we can further reduce the economic loss per unit area while ensuring that the losses do not increase any further. For high-loss areas, the main focus should be to find the weak points in the adaptation to forest fires. The right way to permanently reduce the damage caused by forest fires is to improve the adaptive and symbiotic capacity of the ecosystems and residential communities in relation to fires in a targeted manner and to improve the capacity for quick economic recovery after a fire.