End of the fire season – first continuous fuel moisture series at new sampling sites

Starting in 2022, in the scope of the FirEUrisk project, we have adapted a field sampling method for measuring the Fuel Moisture Content (FMC) of various fuel types which involves collecting appropriate samples at selected field sites. The samples were taken close to meteorological stations, sealed air tight and then transferred to the DendroLab at the Chair of Forest Growth and Woody Biomass Production on TU Dresden’s Tharandt campus where they were weighed, oven dried and then weighed again to quantify the contained water. This gave us a first discrete series of FMC measurements for the growing season of 2022. The dryness at the beginning of the wildfires in the Bohemian-Saxon Switzerland was also visible in the measurements obtained from these samples.

In 2022, we only sampled at the meteorologically already equipped Anchorstation in the Tharandt forest. Since we wanted to continue this work in 2023, we are happy that at the beginning of this year’s fire season we were able to also start sampling in the Saxon Switzerland National Park, where we set up micrometeorological stations in two different forest stands which continuously measure FMC with a so called fuel stick and a standard set of meteorological parameters. Adding another site in the Tharandt forest, we now have a total of four sites equipped with a fuel stick that we can connect with the destructive fuel moisture samples. The recent measurements for the stations are available online and can be viewed here. Now, as this year’s measurement season is coming to an end (even though the autumn interestingly seems to be warmer and dryer than usual), we will focus on evaluating our data and compare it to satellite-based products.