In Germany’s forests, prescribed burning is not applied. Therefore, all forest fires are categorized as wildfires (including emissions from forest fires occurring naturally or caused by humans).

As NFR 11.B is a memo item category, emissions reported here are not accounted for in the National Totals.

For calculating the emissions of wildfires a country specific Tier2 approach was used. The mass of carbon emitted M(C) was calculated using the adapted equation follows the methodology of Seiler and Crutzen (1980)¹⁾.

where:

0.45 = average fraction of carbon in fuel wood;

A = forest area burnt in [m²];

B = mean above-ground biomass of fuel material per unit area in [kg/m²];

β = burning efficiency (fraction burnt) of the above-ground biomass.

The data on forest areas burnt for the period 1990 to 2024 have been taken from the German forest fire statistic ²⁾ managed by the Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food. The mean above-ground biomass of fuel material was determined from the pools above ground biomass, dead wood and litter. The mean above-ground biomass and dead wood biomass was derived for each year by linear extrapolation and interpolation between the

• German National Forest Inventories of 1987, 2002, 2012, 2022 (Bundeswaldinventuren 1987, 2002, 2012, 2022),
• the inventory study 2008 and,
• the carbon inventory 2017.

Biomass of Litter was derived for each year by linear interpolation between 1990 and 2006 and extrapolation from 2007 based on the two Forest soil inventories BZE I ³⁾ and BZE II Wald (2006)⁴⁾.

Pursuant to König (2007) ⁵⁾, 80% of the forest fires in Germany are surface fires and 20% crown fires. In accordance to the IPCC Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF (2003) a burning efficiency of 0.15 was used for surface fires and an efficiency of 0.45 was used for crown fires.

The emissions for the pollutants were calculated by multiplying the mass of carbon with the respective emission factors from (EMEP/EEA, 2023), Chapter 11.B - Forest Fires, Table 3-3 Emission ratios for biomass fires, expressed relative to the carbon emitted as CO2 (based upon recommendations of Andreae, 1991) ⁶⁾.

For the calculation of particulate emissions (TSP, PM₁₀ and PM_2.5) the burnt biomass was multiplied with the respective emission factors from (EMEP/EEA, 2023), Chapter 11.B - Forest Fires, Table 3-5: Tier 2 emission factors for source category 11.B Forest fires, temperate forest ⁷⁾. Those particulate emission factors have been estimated by averaging the emission factors from the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA, 1996) ⁸⁾ methodology, since no better information is available. Those emission factors are assumed to be the same for all types of forest.

The Guidebook does not indicate whether EFs have considered the condensable component (with or without).

The data on forest areas burnt for the period 1990 to 2024 are based on the German forest fire statistic (BLE, 2025) managed by the Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food.

Table 1: Area of forest burnt from 1990 until the latest reporting year, in [ha]

For the year 2024 the follwing estimated emission factors were applied:

Table 2: Emission factors applied for 2024

In addition, a single but large-scale fire which occurred in September 2018, is taken into account here. As an exceptionally large amount of CO₂ was released during this event, a detailed description of the circumstances can be found in the National Inventory Report 2020 for the German Greenhouse Gas Inventory 1990-2018 (NIR 2020), Chapter 6.8.2.5 ⁹⁾.

The burned area of the drained moor used as a military facility covered 1,221 ha. The fire was extensively investigated and documented by the Federal Office for Infrastructure, Environmental Protection and Services of the German Armed Forces. The emissions are calculated according to IPCC GL (2006), chapter 2, form 2.27 ¹⁰⁾.

The product M_B × C_f is set to 336 t d.m. ha^-1 according to Table 2.6 and equation 2.7, 2013 IPCC Wetlands Supplement ¹⁾, i.e. it is assumed that the moor was completely drained during the fire.

For calculating CO emissions, the EF according to Table 2.7, 2013 IPCC Wetlands Supplement 207 g (kg dm)^-1, is taken into account, resulting in 85 kt CO.

¹¹⁾ [(UBA2020> Umweltbundesamt (2020): NIR 2020: National Inventory Report 2020 for the German Greenhouse Gas Inventory 1990-2018; German Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt – UBA), https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/publikationen/berichterstattung-unter-der-klimarahmenkonvention-5; Dessau-Roßlau, April 2020