Can the National Fire-Danger Rating System (NFDRS)-1978 of the United States be effective in other regions? Israel as a case study

Edna Guk; Avi Bar-Massada; Noam Levin

doi:10.1071/WF25088

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

Previous Next Contents Vol 34(8)

Can the National Fire-Danger Rating System (NFDRS)-1978 of the United States be effective in other regions? Israel as a case study

Edna Guk

^A ^B , Avi Bar-Massada ^C and Noam Levin

^A ^D ^*

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Department of Geography, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9190501, Israel.

^B Israel Nature and Parks Authority, 3 Am Ve Olamo Street, Jerusalem 9546303, Israel.

^C Department of Biology and Environment, University of Haifa at Oranim, Kiryat Tivon 36006, Israel.

^D Earth Observation Research Centre, School of the Environment, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Qld 4072, Australia.

^* Correspondence to: n.levin@uq.edu.au

International Journal of Wildland Fire 34, WF25088 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF25088

Submitted: 14 April 2025 Accepted: 23 July 2025 Published: 8 August 2025

© 2025 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of IAWF. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Background

Effective fire management requires reliable pre-fire risk assessment tools. The United States (US) National Fire-Danger Rating System (NFDRS)-1978 is widely used, yet its applicability in non-US ecosystems remains uncertain.

Aims

We retrospectively tested the effectiveness of the Burning Index (BI) in predicting wildfire characteristics in non-US Mediterranean-type ecosystems, using Israel as a case study.

Methods

We examined correlations between the BI and wildfire characteristics at multiple temporal scales and developed an enhanced predictive model by integrating the index with vegetation-related and anthropogenic variables.

Key results

The BI had stronger correlations with wildfire burned area at coarser temporal scales (monthly and weekly), whereas its correlative utility diminished at finer resolutions (daily and event-based scales). Incorporating additional data – such as live fuel moisture content (LFMC), vegetation continuity and anthropogenic factors – significantly enhanced model performance for burned area predictions, increasing the explained variance up to 50% when arson and military-related wildfires were excluded. In contrast, wildfire duration was not successfully predicted by either BI alone or the multivariable predictive model.

Conclusions

The BI’s predictive strength is scale-dependent and limited at fine resolutions.

Implications

Our results highlight the importance of accounting for the characteristics of the local fire regime when adapting the NFDRS for non-US ecosystems.

Keywords: burned area, burning index (BI), fire risk, Israel, Mediterranean ecosystem, NFDRS, remote sensing, wildfires.

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