ZLV Online

Abstract

The Czech Republic has a fragmented terrain and a dense network of forest paths, making it an area where forest fires seldom cause catastrophic damage. As a result, forest fires causes in the Czech Republic have been considered by only a few authors. Foresters, scientists, and the public, however, are increasingly concerned about understanding and controlling forest fires in the country. Although the term “forest fire” is defined in the Regulation no. 2152/2003 of the European Parliament and Council and in a number of professional publications, the Czech literal translation is inaccurate and terminologically obsolete. Because basic terms relating to forest fires are lacking in the Czech language, we herein propose suitable Czech alternatives to the stable foreign terminology. In particular, we provide a new definition of “forest fire” and describe the main types of fires that occur in the Czech Republic. The numbers of forests fires varied between 444–1,398 per year in the period of 2006–2015, an average of 725 per year. The burned area is not commonly large, in average around 0.35 ha, and about 70% of all forest fires are smaller than 0.05 ha. The incidence of forest fires in the Czech Republic is not uniform, in some municipalities with extended powers there was no single forest fire, while in some municipalities there were more than ten forest fires. Estimated ratio between types of forest fires showed percentage superiority of surface forest fire (99.57%). Percentage of crown forest fires (0.04 %) and ground forest fires (0.39%) were almost negligible.