Power law correlations in time series of wild-land and forest fires in Brazil

Abstract

We study temporal correlations in daily hot pixel time series detected in Brazil in the period 1998–2007, using detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). We find that power law correlations decay following two distinct scaling regimes with exponents a ₁ ≅ 0.8 and a ₂ ≅ 1.3, with a crossover point at approximately 45 days. These results agree with previous studies of burned area time series of forest fires in other regions of the world and should be taken into account when modelling wild-land and forest fires in Brazil.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge financial support of Brazilian federal agencies CNPq (project CASADINHO-620113/2008-1) and CAPES (projects PROCAD-1396/2007 and PROCAD-2273/2008). We also thank the anonymous referees for constructive criticism.