The 2010 catastrophic forest fires in Russia: Consequence of rural depopulation?

Abstract

Catastrophic forest fires hit the European part of Russian Federation during summer 2010 as result of a two-month-long period with temperatures above the average by 10 °C coupled with an unusually long drought period. Even though forest fires are usual for Russia, these are typically located in the sparsely populated Asian part of the country. As a consequence of the 2010 summer fires in the densely populated European part of Russia, the mass media poured forth reports of burning forests, villages, victims, about lost crops by fires. The situation was further dramatized by the fact that the extreme smoke from these fires reached Moscow. Seventeen million people lived in the regions where the state of emergency has been declared, and another 10 million inMoscow suffered from smoke. Over one-third of the population of the Russian Federation lived in those regions where the fires were very intense in summer 2010. Still, the main question remained after the disaster which I attempt to answer in this chapter; was the heat the only cause?