Global Ecology and Conservation 16 (2018) e00495

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Global Ecology and Conservation

journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/gecco

Original Research Article

Climate-induced fire regimes in the Russian biodiversity

hotspots
Chao Wu a, Menghui Wang a, Chenxi Lu a, Sergey Venevsky a, *, Vera Sorokina b,
Valerii Kulygin b, Sergey Berdnikov b
a
Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing,
100084, China
b
Southern Scientific Centre of Russian Academy of Sciences, Rostov-on-Don, Russia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Recent fire management policy in Russia assumes the complete exclusion of fires from the
Received 29 November 2018 statutory reserves. We analyzed what the natural, climate-induced fire regimes for the
Accepted 29 November 2018 historical years 1901e1998 in Russia, in the Russian biodiversity hotspots and in the
selected statutory reserves would be if the human impacts were neglected. A global dy-
Keywords: namic vegetation model with an incorporated global statistical fire module was used to
Biodiversity hotpots
reconstruct a fire history for potential vegetation. We demonstrated the feasibility of the
Fires
fire module by comparison of the simulated area burnt for the period 1947e1998 with
DGVM
Conservation management
available fire statistics from Russia. Analysis of fire regimes in the three Russian biodi-
Russia versity hotspots North Caucasus, South Siberia, and the Far East, and in representative
protected areas within these hotspots, included inter-comparison of regional areas burnt,
normalized for the period 1901e1998, and regional average and maximum fire sizes. We
showed that large-scale areas of rich biodiversity in Russia coincide naturally with areas of
frequent fires, which in turn are also highly variable in size. Considerable spatial climatic
and vegetation variation in the hotspots influence the natural fire regimes of regional
protected areas, making continental nature reserves the most fire-prone. We suggest that
the fire management plans of large reserves in Russia should be adjusted according to the
natural geographic pattern of fire regimes in the country for benefit of conservation policy.
© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC
BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction

Fire is the most important disturbance agent in Russian landscapes and it is dependent both on climate and human activity
(Shvidenko and Nilsson, 1999; Andela et al., 2017; Bowman et al., 2009). In many ecosystems, including boreal and temperate
forests and grasslands of Russia, fire maintains plant communities through a shifting of succession mosaics (Chu et al., 2019;
Filipchuk et al., 2018). The fire-induced dynamic of succession mosaics causes habitats to change, namely through the growth
of high quality browsing for large herbivores, and production of dead stems as new dwellings for small mammals and birds.
An increase in prey populations following fire benefits the increase of predator populations. Larix tree species occupying

* Corresponding author.Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University,
Beijing 100084, China.
E-mail address: venevsky@tsinghua.edu.cn (S. Venevsky).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2018.e00495
2351-9894/© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
2 C. Wu et al. / Global Ecology and Conservation 16 (2018) e00495

almost 60% of the Russia's forested territory (Venevsky, 2001) have evolved to become fire-adapted: they need completely
mineralized soil for successful regeneration and have a thick bark which resists heat damage. Thus, in such natural eco-
systems, fire in Russia, as in other countries, supports healthy predator-prey systems and contributes to the maintenance of
the overall biodiversity (Bradshaw et al., 2009; Wallenius et al., 2004).
The role of fire as a necessary biodiversity regulator in fire-prone ecosystems has been recognized only recently by the
scientific community (Keeley et al., 2011; Ylisirnio € et al., 2012). After almost half a century of a policy of fire exclusion,
especially in national parks and protected areas, managers and experts in many countries (Canada, USA, and Australia) have
now started to move towards prescribed burning options (Penman et al., 2011; Pruden and Brennan, 1998).
This is, however, not the case in Russia. For example, according to Circular N 979 dated 31.10.2003 of the (Ministry of
Natural Resources of Russian Federation, 2003) large fires in statutory reserves are always considered as extreme situa-
tions, information about their start and measures to extinguish them should be delivered immediately to the Emergency
Center of the Ministry. Of course, there are still some serious grounds today for such a traditional fire management policy in
Russia. Indeed, the number of registered large fires in statutory reserves has increased from the 1980s onwards, especially in
the southern part of Russia; some examples are the number of fires and area burnt for the period 1930e2000 in the Barguzin
nature reserve in South Siberia (Ananin et al., 2003) and outbreaks of large fires in the years 2002, 2003 and 2004 in some of
the largest nature reserves of Russia, like Teberdinskii (in 2003) in the North Caucasus; Altaiskii (in 2002 and in 2004) in
South Siberia; Botchinskii, Bolonskii and Chinganskii (all in 2003) in the Far East. The majority of fires in the last two to three
decades are of anthropogenic origin. For instance, only 8 of the 88 fires registered in the Russian statutory reserves in the year
1997 were ignited by lightning (Ministry of National Resources of Russian Federation, 1999). The predominance of human
ignitions in the reserves and an increased frequency of fires in the last decades has raised concern in ecological circles in
Russia (mainly NGOs) about the possible negative influence of fires for the viability of range-restricted species inhabiting the
protected areas. Meanwhile, the Russian statutory reserves are heavily under-funded. Most of them cannot pay firefighters in
reality, in spite of the demands/requirements of paper circulars.
Only elaboration of a regional investment policy in Russia can alleviate the worsening problems of fire management in the
country's protected areas (Bradshaw et al., 2009). This policy should take account of contemporary spatial patterns of
biodiversity in Russia and how these match with the spatial distribution of natural fire regimes.
Here we analyze what the natural-climate-induced fire regimes for the historical years 1901e1998 in Russia, in the Russian
biodiversity hotspots and in selected statutory reserves would be if the human impacts were excluded and suggest
conservation-oriented fire policy options for future.

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Country-scale assessment of the area burnt for the period 1901e1998

Russia occupies approximately 17 million km2. Thus, a global-scale assessment of the area burnt over a long period is
necessary for Russia. The only existing regression reconstruction of the last century of fire history in Russia (Mouillot and
Field, 2005) is designed for a spatial resolution of 1 1 degree, which is not sufficient for biodiversity studies. We advo-
cate the application of a global-scale vegetation model with an implemented mechanistic or semi-mechanistic fire module for
this purpose. Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs) are specifically designed to simulate a climatically driven state of
potential vegetation. These models simulate ecosystem carbon and water pools and fluxes and the structure of broad
vegetation communities (plant functional types) with a spatial resolution varying from several hundred to 10 km and with a
monthly or a daily temporal resolution (see examples in (Brovkin et al., 1997; Sitch et al., 2003; Venevsky and Maksyutov,
2007; Woodward et al., 2000; Sitch et al., 2008)). Some of these models have implemented mechanistic (Venevsky et al.,
2002; Thonicke et al., 2010) or semi-mechanistic fire modules (Lenihan et al., 1998; Thonicke et al., 2001; Wu et al., 2017)
or stochastic fire modules (Woodward et al., 2000). Despite certain deficiencies of existing global fire modules (see Bowman
(2005) and Venevsky and Venevskaia (2005)), analytical description of the interactions between climate, potential vegetation
and fire, implemented in DGVMs, allows simulation experiments to be set up to assess the feedbacks between these
important ecosystem agents (see, for example, the simulation of the global vegetation pattern in a world without fire,
conducted by Bond and Keeley (2005)). Analogously, we applied the Lund-Potsdam-Jena (LPJ) DGVM (Sitch et al., 2003) with
the implemented semi-mechanistic fire module Glob-FIRM (Thonicke et al., 2001) for a reconstruction of the fire history
which would occur under the climate conditions of the years 1901e1998 without humans, i.e. with potential vegetation and
with an absence of anthropogenic impacts upon fire regimes.
LPJ DGVM has been shown to successfully reproduce the amplitude and phase of carbon and water exchanges between the
atmosphere and terrestrial ecosystems on the seasonal timescale (Sitch et al., 2003). The present-day broad-scale global
vegetation distribution simulated by the model is in general agreement with satellite-derived maps of phenology and leaf
types. The fire module Glob-FIRM (Thonicke et al., 2001; Wu et al., 2017) implemented into the LPJ DGVM is designed as a
combination of a statistical relationship between the length of the fire season and area burnt and a mechanistic estimation of
fire probability, based on soil moisture. The daily probability of fire is a decreasing function of the daily water content in the
upper soil layer with the rate of decrease specific for the plant functional types. The probabilities accumulated over a year
result in the length of the fire season, which is used to estimate the annual area burnt. The area burnt is calculated from the
length of the fire season with a power relationship, derived as a global non-linear regression from available fire statistics for
 C. Wu et al. / Global Ecology and Conservation 16 (2018) e00495 3

natural vegetation communities. Human-changed fire regimes, as well as other land-use impacts, are not considered in this
formulation of the fire module, while climate-fire-vegetation feedbacks are included in the LPJ DGVM, although rather
simplistically.
For the simulation of area burnt in Russia over the period 1901e1998 we used the 0.5  0.5 longitude/latitude monthly
climate data, CRU05 (New et al., 1999). The CO2 concentrations for the years 1901e1998 and the soil texture information were
similar to the other standard LPJ DGVM runs (Sitch et al., 2003; Thonicke et al., 2001; Venevsky et al., 2002).

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Comparison of simulated areas burnt with Russian fire statistics

The real historical dynamic of burnt areas for the last century in Russia is not available. The regular observation of fires up
to the year 1998 was carried out only in the so-called “zone of fire protection” (Shvidenko and Nilsson, 1999) which covers 760
million hectares of Russia (45% of the Russian land-surface). In the Asian part of Russia, active fire observation and man-
agement took place only to the south of 60 NL (Conard et al., 2002). Total area burnt in the zone of active forest protection
varies from 0.5 to 2.1 million hectares with a total (registered) number of fires equal to 10e30 thousand (Korovin and Isaev,
1998). The average number of fires at 1 million hectares, is several times lower and the average ratio of area burnt is several
times higher in comparison with Europe and Northern America. This means there is a relatively low level of fire protection in
the country, despite significant efforts in fire suppression undertaken in the USSR starting from the 1920s (Mouillot and Field,
2005).
Approximately 9% of Russian territory has intensive land use (Venevsky and Venevskaia, 2005) recalculated from
Ramankutty and Foley (1998). So, the effects of land use and fire suppression should have a relatively small effect on fire
regimes for the total area of Russia. Therefore, we can assume that a large-scale fire model incorporated into a global model of
potential vegetation should match observations of areas burnt for the whole country. We tested this hypothesis for the period
with available fire statistics for the years 1947e1996 (Korovin and Isaev, 1998). The data of Korovin and Isaev (1998) do not
distinguish between lightning and human fires. Thus, validation of Glob-FIRM for Russia is based on the hypothesis that
climate is a major driver of wildfires and that global statistical relationships from the fire module can be applied for the
region. The last assumption is based on the fact that major dependence of the burnt area on fire season length in Glob-FIRM is
obtained particularly using observations (one third of data points) for needle leave pine forest in mountains of Central
Portugal, i.e. for ecosystem similar to the ones in forested North Caucasus, South Siberia, and Far East, but with slightly
warmer climate. We assume that large discrepancies between observed and simulated burnt areas for Russia are mainly
explained by the absence of socio-economic drivers of wildfires in our modelling approach.
As the exact geographical borders of the “zone of fire protection” are not known, the following procedure was done to
obtain the calculated area burnt for comparison. All the 2976 grid cells (0.5  0.5 longitude/latitude) in the European part of
Russia (west of 60 EL) were included into the zone. The total area of these grid cells was deducted from the 7 600 000 km2
estimated by Russian officials as the active fire management zone (Korovin and Isaev, 1998). The resulting area was allocated
to the southern Asian part of Russia (995 grid cells). The comparison for the period 1947e1996 revealed that the fire module
systematically underestimates the area burnt for the territory of Russia. The systematic bias was corrected by adding the
difference between mean values for the observed and calculated total area burnt in the “zone of fire protection”. The ratio 1.18
between these two means (observed to calculated) was used to increase the area burnt for each grid cell in Russia. Despite the
relatively low correlation (0.154) between observed and calculated total area burnt in the “zone of fire protection” for the
period 1947e1996, one can state that after the scaling correction the fire model feasibly reproduced the fire regime in Russia
(see Fig. 1).
Indeed, the dynamics of area burnt is reproduced rather well for the period 1947e1986: for 27 years the values are
simulated with a relative error of less than 30%, peaks and drops of the calculated area burnt follow the observed curve in 26
cases. The correlation coefficient between the observed and calculated area burnt increases to 0.26 for the years 1947e1986.
An almost two-fold increase in the correlation coefficient, obtained after excluding from the analysis the final ten years of the
data, indicate a possible problem in the fire statistics, which may be associated with the economic instability in Russia during
the “perestroika” period. Another explanation may be related to a radical change of fire regimes in the country due to the same
socio-economic reasons.
The decreasing linear trends for the calculated and observed total area burnt in the “zone of fire protection” over the entire
time period are almost indistinguishable (not shown). This decreasing trend in area burnt in boreal Russia in the last century
was also independently reconstructed by Mouillot and Field (2005).
The comparison exercise demonstrates that the fire module, driven only by climate, can be applied to study the long-term
dynamics of fire regimes in Russia, despite the active fire management applied in the country.

3.2. Russian biodiversity hotspots

In our existing study (Venevsky and Venevskaia, 2005) we showed that national biodiversity hotspots in a large country
can be mapped from biotic or abiotic data using the quantitative criteria for plant endemism and land use of the “global
hotspots” approach (Myers et al., 2000), respectively corrected for this country.
4 C. Wu et al. / Global Ecology and Conservation 16 (2018) e00495

Fig. 1. Area burnt in the zone of fire protection, provided by Russian statistics (Korovin and Isaev, 1998) and by the global vegetation model LPJ DGVM after scaling
correction.

The three biodiversity hotspots North Caucasus, South Siberia, and the Far East were mapped for Russia from abiotic data
by applying the corrected “global hotspot” criteria (see Fig. 2). The experts also identified these regions as the most important
zones with the highest diversity of flora and fauna in Russia (Ministry of National Resources of Russian Federation, 2002), but
they did not specify their actual areas.

Fig. 2. Spatial distribution of fire return intervals for potential vegetation across Russia and the geographical location of the three biodiversity hotspots.
 C. Wu et al. / Global Ecology and Conservation 16 (2018) e00495 5

Despite the relatively small total area of the mapped Russian hotspots (they occupy only 3% of the entire Russian territory),
these areas are inhabited by 68% of the Russian RDB species belonging to the five taxa (vascular plants, amphibians, reptiles,
birds and mammals) (see Venevskaia (2005)).
Each of the hotspots is characterized by significant variation in regional climatic conditions, mainly due to high altitudinal
differences. Six vegetation zones (pre-tundra, semi-desert, steppe, temperate forest, middle and southern taiga) of a total of
eight identified for Russia by Stolbovoi and McCallum (2002) are represented in the three biodiversity hotspots. Each of these
zones is characterized by the presence of flammable vegetation. Steppe (temperate grassland) has the most frequent fires in
its natural state. However, it is almost completely converted to agricultural lands in all of the three hotspots.

3.3. Intercomparison of simulated fire regimes in Russian biodiversity hotspots for the period 1901e1998

The geographical pattern of fire regimes in Russia is rather heterogeneous, ranging from regions with frequent fires in
continental locations in the south of the Asian part to areas with almost no fires in the coastal tundra zone. Intervals between
subsequent fires, fire return intervals averaged over the time period of a millennium (see calculation algorithm in Thonicke
et al. (2001)), vary by one order (from 20 years to 900 years) for Russia (see Fig. 1). We normalized yearly values for area burnt
in each grid cell by division into its average value for the period 1901e1998. A spatial averaging of the normalized annual area
burnt over the regions of interest allows a direct comparison of regional 100-year trends of area burnt and their relative
amplitudes. For comparison purposes, we classified each of the years in a region according to the value of the normalized area
burnt. A “fire year” happened when the annual area burnt was not less than the average one for the period 1901e1998. The
annual area burnt in a “large fire year” exceeded the averaged one by 1.5 times and in an “extreme fire year” the value
exceeded twice that for the averaged normalized year. Percentages of extreme and large fire years provide information on
regional relative variability in areas burnt induced by climate dynamics in the years 1901e1998. A regional estimate of the
average fire size can be calculated if we assume a constant number of fires in each of grid cells. We obtain the constant
number of fires in a grid cell as five, by a division of the 20000 fires observed on average in the “zone of fire protection”
(Korovin and Isaev, 1998), into the 3971 of grid cells of this zone. With this assumption, the simulated average fire size in
Russia is equal to 195 ha in the European part and 38 ha in the Asian part, values close to those of Korovin and Isaev (1998)
(50e200 ha). An average size of fire and a maximum size of fire for the entire time period can be calculated in a region of
interest, using this approach.

3.4. Dynamics of area burnt in the hotspots

The simulated normalized area burnt for 1901e1998 in the European part of Russia and in the Asian part of Russia were
compared to those in the three biodiversity hotspots (see Fig. 3) Areas of Russia to the north of 66 NL were excluded from this
analysis in order to minimize the influence of fires in the tundra zone, which is not present in the hotspots (Venevsky and
Venevskaia, 2005).
A small decreasing trend is seen both for the European (Fig. 3A) and the Asian part of Russia (Fig. 3B), although more
significantly for the area to the west of the Ural mountains. However, a decrease of normalized area burnt for 1901e1998 is
simulated only for the Far East hotspot, which is situated near the Pacific Ocean. Climate-induced fire regimes in the two
continental biodiversity hotspots, North Caucasus and South Siberia, did not change according to the model run.
All biodiversity hotspots have distinct differences in fire regimes in comparison with other regions of Russia. Indeed, the
percentage of large and extreme fire years in the hotspots is significantly higher than in the entire European and Asian parts of
Russia (see Table 1). The largest amplitude for the area burnt is simulated for the Far East (see Fig. 3E), where almost one third
of years were defined as extreme. The average fire size (10 ha) here is almost four times lower than in the Asian part of Russia,
due to the mild semi-subtropical climate in the southern part of the Far East and its proximity to the ocean. The maximum fire
size in the Far East, nevertheless, is almost the same as the continental one (51 ha against 56 ha), which confirm a high danger
of fire in dry years in the hotspot.
The South Siberia biodiversity hotspot has both an average fire size and a maximum fire size larger than those for the
whole of the Asian part of Russia. An almost two-fold increase in the maximum fire size for the hotspot is likely to be caused
by the region's extreme continental conditions.
A relatively large average and maximum fire size for the North Caucasus is associated with the simulated predominance of
grasslands in the region, because the underlying vegetation model projects potential vegetation, while land use impacts are
neglected. Indeed, the simulated value of the average fire size (332 ha) for the North Caucasus is close to similar estimates for
grasslands (250e400 ha) (Keane and Finney, 2003). Luckily, the fire-prone grassland vegetation in the hotspot was converted
to agricultural lands a long time ago.

3.5. Dynamics of area burnt in representative protected areas of the hotspots

The three Russian biodiversity hotspots have a different number and different share of protected areas (see Venevskaia
(2005) for details), which are managed either by local or the federal authorities (see www.biodata.ru for a comprehensive
listing). Of ten major types of protected areas in Russia, we concentrated our analysis on zapovedniks and national parks,
which are the statutory reserves classified by IUCN as protected areas of category I and II. The largest of such reserves in the
6 C. Wu et al. / Global Ecology and Conservation 16 (2018) e00495

Fig. 3. Simulated normalized area burnt for 1901e1998 with linear trends in the European (A) and Asian (B) parts of Russia and in the Russian biodiversity
hotspots North Caucasus (C), South Siberia (D), Far East (E).

Table 1
Fire regimes in the Russian biodiversity hotspots.

Large fire years (%) Extreme fire years (%) Average fire size (ha) Maximum fire size (ha)
European part 8 0 194 324
North Caucasus 27 11 332 878
Asian part 0 0 38 56
South Siberia 19 2 42 88
Far East 63 29 10 51

hotspots have significant areas (exceeding or far exceeding 1600 km2) in each of the regions (see Table 2) and, thus, should
maintain their own fire management strategy. The fire regimes for the period 1901e1998, induced by climate, can be assessed
using the normalized area burnt approach, described above, in these protected areas.
From this set, we took for analysis the five reserves with the most continental geographical location (Kavkazskii zapo-
vednik in the North Caucasus, Bureinskii zapovednik in the Far East, and all large reserves in South Siberia). Short biogeo-
graphical characteristics of the five protected areas are presented in Fig. 4.
 C. Wu et al. / Global Ecology and Conservation 16 (2018) e00495 7

Table 2
Protected areas in the hotspots exceeding 1600 km2 (Venevskaia, 2005).

Largest protected areas in the hotspots Area (km2)

North Caucasus 68,761
Kavkazsky zapovednik 2803.35
Sochinsky National Park 1937.37
South Siberia 182,875
Altaisky zapovednik 8812.38
Tunkinsky National Park 11,836.00
Sayano-Shushensky zapovednik 3903.68
Far East 229,691
Botchinsky zapovednik 2673.80
Bureinsky zapovednik 3584.44
Sikhote-Alinsky zapovednik 3901.84

Results of analysis of the normalized areas burnt for the representative reserves reveal a high spatial variation of fire
regimes within the hotspots (see Table 3).
The area burnt for the period 1901e1998 in the reserves followed the trend of the respective hotspots for South Siberia and
the Far East. However, it decreased in the Kavkazskii zapovednik e unlike in the adjacent hotspot e which most likely
occurred also in other protected areas of North Caucasus. This is a consequence of the disproportional altitudinal repre-
sentation of protected areas in the region, which are mostly situated in the highlands (see Venevskaia (2005)). The average
fire size and the maximum fire size were considerably smaller in Kavkazskii zapovednik than in the hotspot and were similar
to the values observed for the European part of Russia. Large fire years and extreme fire years were absent in the reserve.
In northern continental part of the Far East at Bureinskii zapovednik, the average fire size is ten times higher, while the
maximum fire size is three times higher than in the entire hotspot.
These values are also significantly higher in comparison to the average fire size and to the maximum fire size simulated for
the Asian part of Russia, which confirms the high fire weather risk in the northern part of the Far East hotspot.
Simulated fire regimes in the three largest reserves in South Siberia were dissimilar due to climatic gradients in the
hotspot. Saiano-Shushenskii zapovednik, which is situated 200 km to the north of the other two reserves on the northern
slopes of the Sayan mountains, has visibly smaller fire sizes due to its harsh climate. The fire danger in the two southern
reserves, Tunkinskii national park and Alataiskii zapovednik, is estimated to be very high. All the parameters suggested for
analysis of fire regimes are larger than those for the entire hotspot. Altaiskii zapovednik has the record simulated maximum
fire size (3.5 times higher than in the hotspot), due to the dry hot summer and the relatively large share of grasslands in the
reserve.
The observed variation of area burnt for Asian Russia in the year 1998 (Conard et al., 2002) confirms the high fire danger
simulated by the model for geographical locations near Bureinskii zapovednik, Tunkinskii national park, and Altaiskii
zapovednik.

3.6. Implications for fire management policy

The major conclusion which we derived from our analysis is that there is a natural coincidence between areas with high
biodiversity value and areas with high frequency of fires. This means that fires here are natural and should be permitted in
order to maintain biodiversity. The climatically induced trend in the area burnt stays unchanged or is decreasing for the
Russian biodiversity hotspots. An increase in fire activity observed in South Siberia and the Far East in the last two decades of
the study period is likely to have been caused by the socio-economic situation (high unemployment rate, low incomes),
pressing urban populations out into the forests (Sheshukov, personal communication). Indeed, Jupp et al. (2006) found for
Central Siberia (area of 3 million square kilometers) that for the decade 1992e2003 fire scars spatially are highly correlated
with human population density. Current fire management policy in the Far East and South Siberia should take account of the
rising anthropogenic impact on regional fire regimes (Bradshaw et al., 2009). However, the restriction of human access to
strict nature reserves, practiced in the former Soviet Union, is worthwhile only for habitats of narrow-range species and
cannot easily be realized under the present funding of protected areas in Russia. We suggest that each large individual reserve
in the three regions should develop its own fire management plan, based on the geographical variation in climatically induced
fire regimes between the hotspots and within each hotspot. Protected areas in geographical locations with a naturally high
variation in area burnt, like Alatiskii zapovednik or Tunkinskii national park, should elaborate measures to prevent a con-
centration of significant fuel load either by passively letting some fires continue to burn, or even carrying out prescribed
burning. The experience of using prescribed burning for the restoration of natural fire cycles in the protected areas of British
Columbia (Agee, 1993; Weber and Taylor, 1992) can be adopted in Russia for future fire safety. Plans for the development of
new reserve networks in the hotspots should consider the spatial patterns of natural fire regimes. For example, the plan for
optimization of the protected area network of the southern Far East (Bochamikov and Martinenko, 2003) suggests increasing
the total area of reserves from 7% to 20% in the northwestern part of the hotspot. According to our analysis and observations
8 C. Wu et al. / Global Ecology and Conservation 16 (2018) e00495

Fig. 4. Large representative reserves in the Russian biodiversity hotspots with their predominant vegetation according to the classification of Stolbovoi and
McCallum (2002): A) Kavkazskii zapovednik (temperate forest and grasslands) B) Altaiskii zapovednik (southern taiga, temperate forest, and grasslands);
Sayno-Shushenskii zapovednik (middle taiga, pre-tundra); Tunkinskii national park (southern taiga); C) Bureinskii zapovednik (southern taiga, pre-tundra.
 C. Wu et al. / Global Ecology and Conservation 16 (2018) e00495 9

Fig. 4. (continued).

(Conard et al., 2002), this region is characterized by a large range in variation of area burnt, so the location and size of
prospective reserves should be carefully identified according to the natural fire cycle of the area.

3.7. Future analysis

A new-generation fire module should explicitly include the source of ignition (lightning against human) and the possi-
bility of implementing fire suppression scenarios for a better understanding of natural and anthropogenic fire cycles
(Venevsky et al., 2018; Hantson et al., 2016; Rabin et al., 2017). Successful application of a fire module with human-induced
10 C. Wu et al. / Global Ecology and Conservation 16 (2018) e00495

Table 3
Fire regimes in the representative protected areas of the Russian biodiversity hotspots.

Protected area Trend for Large fire LFY ratio to the Extreme fire EFY ratio to the Average fire AFS ratio to the Maximum MFS ratio to the
1901 years eLFY hotspot value years - EFY(%) hotspot value size - AFS(ha) hotspot value fire size (ha) hotspot value
e1998 (%)
North Caucasus
Kaukasian decrease 0 0.0 0 0.0 180 0.5 242 0.3
zapovednik
South Siberia
Altaisskii no trend 48 5.3 32 32.0 58 1.4 308 3.5
zapovednik
Tunkinskii nat. no trend 26 2.8 13 12.8 78 1.9 210 2.4
Park
Saiano- no trend 51 5.7 26 25.7 14 0.3 42 0.5
Shushenski
zapovednik
Far East
Bureinskii decrease 15 1.5 0 0.0 98 9.8 168 3.3
zapovednik

ignitions for peninsular Spain (Venevsky et al., 2002) showed that such an approach is possible if parameterizations of
anthropogenic influences are known.
A predictive capacity of the fire module within DGVM for the area burnt can be achieved by modifying the analytical
description for all processes from a yearly/monthly to a daily time step (Venevsky and Maksyutov, 2007). Indeed, outbreaks of
fires in the hotspots seem to happen mostly in the spring (see the example of satellite imagery analysis for the period
1992e1993 for the globe (Dwyer et al., 2001)), a fact to be used in the elaboration of regional fire policies. The correct timing
and placing in space of natural fire hotspots may help to facilitate conservation in the Russian biodiversity hotspots.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare no conflict of Interest.

Acknowledgments

We thank A. Schlums for English corrections. This study is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China,
China (31570475) and Tsinghua University- Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University Joint Scientific Research
Fund (20173080026).

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