Assessment of the recurrence interval of wildfires in mainland Portugal and the identification of affected LUC patterns

Abstract

Wildfires are responsible for major land use and land cover (LUC) changes. These events are frequent and catastrophic in Portugal and are responsible for great damage and loss of human life. In this study, a map to assess the probability of wildfire occurrence (PWO) in mainland Portugal was created for the period 1975-2017 (first half of 2017). The PWO was obtained by the superimposition of all layers by adding all the burned areas for the total period. It was observed that the occurrences and extent of the burned areas are highly variable from year to year. The PWO map was cross-referenced with LUC geoinformation to evaluate the LUC types that were more affected by the wildfires. The results presented and the PWO maps are important for the management and planning of forest areas and for the creation of guidelines to implement preventive and reactive actions in case of wildfires.

Effects of different land use and land cover data on the landslide susceptibility zonation of road networks

“…All the predisposing factors and landslide inventory were converted to raster (resolution 10 m) to assess the landslide susceptibility. The selection of the predisposing factors' cell size was based on several geoinformation conversion tests in the Zêzere watershed previously performed by Meneses et al (2016Meneses et al ( , 2018b.…”

Historical fire records at the two ends of Iberian Central Mountain System: Estrela massif and Ayllón massif

“…Historical fire records at the two ends of Iberian Central Mountain System: Estrela massif and Ayllón massif throughout the twentieth century in Portugal (Macedo & Sardinha, 1987), forest fire database analysis (Castellnou, Miralles, & Molina, 2009;Lourenço, Fernandes, Nunes, Gonçalves, & Vieira, 2013;Meneses, Reis, & Reis, 2018), or documentary newspaper sources throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries focusing precisely on fire regimes on a regional scale in the Central Mountain System (Araque Jiménez et al, 1999;Montiel-Molina, 2013b). However, none of the studies includes the three criteria applied here: use a local scale of analysis to look at the subject of fire regimes and practices of fire management in greater depth, and set in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.…”

Alterações De Uso E Ocupação Do Solo Na Bacia Hidrográfica Do Rio Zêzere (Portugal): Implicações Hidrodinâmicas

“…Nas bacias hidrográfi cas com ocupação de fl oresta, há ainda a problemática dos incêndios fl orestais ao proporcionarem o aumento da erosão dos solos (Konstantinos et al, 2010;Meneses et al, 2018;Moody and Martin, 2001;Pierson et al, 2001). Estes eventos causam diversos problemas ambientais (poluição do ar, da água e degradação do solo), mas evidencia-se o facto de deixarem as vertentes sem vegetação, proporcionando o aumento da escorrência superfi cial e, consequentemente, o aumentando da erosão hídrica.…”