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The economic aspect of establishing fire breaks along public roads and reducing the losses caused by forest fires Cover

The economic aspect of establishing fire breaks along public roads and reducing the losses caused by forest fires

Open Access
|Dec 2025

Figures & Tables

Figure 1.

Occurrence of forest fires along public roads against the background of all fires by the type of fire (types of fires: TREES – total stand of trees, SINGLE – single tree, SUBSUR – subsurface, SOIL COVER – soil cover)
Occurrence of forest fires along public roads against the background of all fires by the type of fire (types of fires: TREES – total stand of trees, SINGLE – single tree, SUBSUR – subsurface, SOIL COVER – soil cover)

Figure 2.

The occurrence of forest fires near public roads against the background of all fires by the type of soil cover (soil cover type: MOSS – moss, MOSSB – moss – blueberry, WIT – without litter, HSOD – heavily sodded, VWEED – heavily infested with weeds, LITT – litter, SOD – sodded, HERB – herbaceous)
The occurrence of forest fires near public roads against the background of all fires by the type of soil cover (soil cover type: MOSS – moss, MOSSB – moss – blueberry, WIT – without litter, HSOD – heavily sodded, VWEED – heavily infested with weeds, LITT – litter, SOD – sodded, HERB – herbaceous)

Figure 3.

Occurrence of forest fires near public roads against the background of all fires after the fire area
Occurrence of forest fires near public roads against the background of all fires after the fire area

Figure 4.

Occurrence of forest fires near public roads against the background of all fires by the detection method (detection method: OTH – other persons, GPAT – ground patrols, OPOI – observation points, APAT – aerial patrols)
Occurrence of forest fires near public roads against the background of all fires by the detection method (detection method: OTH – other persons, GPAT – ground patrols, OPOI – observation points, APAT – aerial patrols)

Figure 5.

The occurrence of forest fires near public roads against the background of all fires according to the duration of the extinguishing action
The occurrence of forest fires near public roads against the background of all fires according to the duration of the extinguishing action

Figure 6.

Occurrence of forest fires along public roads against the background of all fires according to the number of rescue and firefighting units
Occurrence of forest fires along public roads against the background of all fires according to the number of rescue and firefighting units

Figure 7.

Distribution of the burnt area depending on the place of origin
Distribution of the burnt area depending on the place of origin

Figure 8.

Distribution of the amount of damage depending on the location of the fire
Distribution of the amount of damage depending on the location of the fire

Figure 9.

Distribution of the share of the costs for the construction of new and maintenance of existing fire breaks as well as the costs for the cleaning of areas near public roads in the total costs of fire protection for forest districts depending on FFHC
Distribution of the share of the costs for the construction of new and maintenance of existing fire breaks as well as the costs for the cleaning of areas near public roads in the total costs of fire protection for forest districts depending on FFHC

The occurrence of forest fires in the belts depending on the forest fire hazard category of the forest districts

Forest fire hazard categoryShare of fires in fire breaks (%)Share of the number of forest districts according to FFHC (%)Share of the number of fires in fire breaks by FFHC
on fire lanes (%)all fires (%)
I9.32952.1854.73
II10.64238.7735.69
III9.2299.059.58

Results of the p-statistics for the comparison of the share of costs for the construction of lanes and the cleaning of areas along public roads in the total costs of fire protection in relation to the grouping variable of the forest fire hazard category

Dependent variable: share of costsp-Value for multiple comparisons (bilateral); cost shareIndependent (grouping) variable: FFHC Kruskal–Wallis test:H (2, N = 430)= 5.573127, p = 0.0616
IR:193.21IIR: 225.38IIIR: 222.84
I 0.0750190.198098
II0.075019 1.000000
III0.1980981.000000

Average cost of establishing new and maintaining existing fire breaks and clearing areas near public roads in relation to the forest area of forest districts depending on the forest fire hazard category

Forest fire hazard category of the forest districtAverage cost of belts (PLN/ha)Average cost of belts and tidying up (PLN/ha)Average share of fire protection costs (%)
I2,52511,2805.86
II2,61711,0698.11
III1,0396,17716.54

Average annual costs of creating new and maintaining existing fire breaks and cleaning up the area in the period 2018–2022 according to the Regional Directorates of State Forests

Regional Directorate of State ForestsCost (PLN)Contribution to forest fire protection costs (%)
installing new beltsmaintaining existing lanestidying up the area along public roadsinstalling and maintaining seat beltsestablishing and maintaining lanes and tidying up the area
Białystok2,74497,320553,1801.8812.29
Gdańsk9,60573,115329,2133.1315.60
Katowice28,297138,858562,0211.516.57
Kraków09,636143,5541.5624.74
Krosno31229,56183,5842.057.80
Lublin77847,257248,2111.368.36
Łódź1,72641,124296,5211.4211.24
Olsztyn7,75870,038308,2711.447.15
Piła714223,193324,3873.338.15
Poznań5,56554,216142,8061.274.30
Radom8012,767184,5500.263.99
Szczecin1,563123,723351,9540.943.58
Szczecinek4,779169,290373,1152.106.61
Toruń9,834248,115784,2543.0312.23
Warszawa93715,032302,9210.356.97
Wrocław1,35575,21599,1951.092.51
Zielona Góra1,40072,824501,1190.685.24
Country77,4461,501,2855,588,8551.557.02
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ffp-2025-0022 | Journal eISSN: 2199-5907 | Journal ISSN: 0071-6677
Language: English
Page range: 279 - 288
Submitted on: Jun 25, 2025
Accepted on: Jul 22, 2025
Published on: Dec 12, 2025
Published by: Forest Research Institute
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 4 issues per year

© 2025 Ryszard Szczygieł, Mirosław Kwiatkowski, published by Forest Research Institute
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.