Once there is connected, dry fuel in the landscape and dangerous fire weather conditions, all it takes is an ignition to set things off. Predicting ignition is very challenging because it comes from many different and complex sources: lightning and us humans. Researchers develop models to predict ignition based on weather, vegetation, terrain and other factors.
To learn more about ignition likelihood models read:
Clarke, H. et al (2019) Developing and testing models of the drivers of anthropogenic and lightning-caused wildfire ignitions in south-eastern Australia. Journal of Environmental Management doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.01.055
This data shows us the average ignition probability conditions across Victoria. Higher values represent greater chance of ignition. The ignition probability shown here is a complex function of fire weather, house density, distance to roads, mean annual rainfall and vegetation type. Maps show the spatial pattern of ignition. Graphs show the pattern of average ignition probability over time for different regions, which is highly stable compared to fire, fire weather, dryness and fuel. Although ignition model output is available for earlier years, for maps we start in 2000 to allow comparison with other drivers and fire data. In the Graph section we go back to 1973 to allow comparison with fire weather and dryness records. We use a fire year rather than a calendar year e.g. the 2020 fire year runs from July 2019 to June 2020.
Hover over the map and graphs to get more info. Click on the range to see changes between years.