A Study on the Correlation between Forest Fire Occurrence and Asian Dust during the Spring Season from 2000 to 2008

The purpose of this study is to analyze the patterns of forest fire possibly related with Asian dust event and carry out a correlation analysis between forest fire occurrence and existence or not of the Asian dust event during dry seasons i.e.February to May in 2000 to 2008.To study the correlation of forest fire and Asian dust, we surveyed information of Asian dust observations, forest fire statistics, fire danger rating index, weather data such as temperature, relative humidity and wind speed of the day occurring the forest fire.As a consequence of analysis, the regional frequency of Asian dust was the highest in Gyeonggi and Chungbuk divisions.Frequencies of forest fire occurrence by the Asian dust events were the highest in the day before three days of the Asian dust event.The highest frequent regions of forest fire occurrence were district of boundary line between Gyeonggi and Western of Gangwon, Chungbuk and Gyeonbuk inland.The correlation between forest fire and fire danger rating index showed the high correlation with the day before three days and after three days of the Asian dust event.These correlation coefficients were 0.50038 and 0.53978 to 1% significance level.The result of analysis between the frequency of forest fire occurrence and wind speed had a highly negative relationship at all the Asian dust days, the day before and after three days.The correlation coefficients had been -0.58623 to -0.61245 to 1% significance level.Relative humidity showed a little of negative relationship with forest fire occurrence in -0.2568(p ≤ 0.01) for the Asian dust day and -0.35309(p ≤ 0.01) for next three days.Moreover, at the day before three days of Asian dust events, it was -0.23701 to 1% significance level.However, the mean temperature did not correlate with frequency of forest fire occurrence by Asian dust events at all.