Fire on the Hills: An Environmental History of Fires and Fire Policy in Mediterranean-Type Ecosystems

Pereira, Mário; Hayes, Jack Patrick; Miller, Char; Orenstein, Daniel E.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-41085-2_9

Cited by 5 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…In the past 30 years, three large fires, in 1989, 2010, and 2016, affected the area and burned, respectively, 600, 5,000, and 2,000 ha. The 2010 fire affected principally the Carmel National Park and resulted in 44 fatalities, 250 homes destroyed, close to 20,000 people evacuated from their homes and over 5 million trees lost (Tal, 2013;Pereira et al, 2017). The 2016 fire, instead, developed almost exclusively in the urban environment, spreading throughout the city via the vegetated, dry riverbeds.…”

Section: The Haifa-carmel Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While goat grazing pressure was reduced, the density of the remaining woody vegetation increased (Carmel and Kadmon, 1999), and the forest and shrub cover became thicker, which made it impenetrable to humans and highly flammable (Tal, 2013). Although grazing is no longer opposed by land use agencies, it has not been fully reintroduced in the area (Pereira et al, 2017). Parallel to grazing trends, at the end of the nineteenth century, entire areas of Mt.…”

Section: An Application To the Haifa-carmel Case Study Changes In Thementioning

confidence: 99%

“…These mainly concerned the need to dedicate more resources to ecosystem management in the Carmel area, principally addressing fuel loads and landscape diversity. When the expert committee was assembled to provide post-2010 fire recommendations, it explained that their recommendations were nearly identical to those offered following the 1989 fire (Perevolotsky, 2011;Pereira et al, 2017).…”

Section: Fire Risk Management In the Haifa-carmel Region Since The 1990smentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fire-Regulating Services and Disservices With an Application to the Haifa-Carmel Region in Israel

Depietri

Orenstein

2019

Front. Environ. Sci.

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In the Mediterranean region, and in other fire-prone areas of the globe, the risk of human and economic losses due to forest fires has increased in the past decades, particularly at the urban-wildland interface. To counter this trend, economic and human resources are generally invested to combat and suppress wildfires, with much less invested to adapt through ecosystem-based management. Ecosystem services for fire regulation are rarely accounted for in the literature and are generally excluded from ecosystem service classifications. This gap causes fire-regulating services to be overlooked in socio-ecological assessments and in economic valuations, potentially further hampering the design and implementation of ecosystem-based approaches. We review the literature on fire risk reduction related to ecosystem management to define and characterize fire-regulating services and disservices. We then suggest indicators for the assessment of these services and disservices, and we propose a conceptual framework linking fire risk, ecosystem services, and ecosystem management practices. In the second part of the paper, we apply these concepts to the historical development of the social-ecological system of the Haifa-Mount Carmel region in Israel, including pre-and post-fire forest management practices. To inform the case study we investigate reports, relevant scientific articles, and policy documents, all corroborated with information from expert lectures on the topic. We conclude by suggesting that human capital should become an integral part of the description and definition of fire-regulating services and disservices, especially for highly modified urban and peri-urban environments.

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Section: The Haifa-carmel Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: An Application To the Haifa-carmel Case Study Changes In Thementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Fire Risk Management In the Haifa-carmel Region Since The 1990smentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fire-Regulating Services and Disservices With an Application to the Haifa-Carmel Region in Israel

Depietri

Orenstein

2019

Front. Environ. Sci.

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“…In fact, on a global scale, humans cause most of the wildfires, except in the boreal areas of North America and Eurasia, where a significant number of natural wildfires occurs and are responsible for a large part of the TBA (Le Page et al, 2015;Rowe and Scotter, 1973;Stocks et al, 2002;Veraverbeke et al, 2017). In Mediterranean-type ecosystems, wildfires are mostly caused (intentionally or negligently) by human activities which vary spatially and temporally in ways that could affect their size and destructiveness (Curt et al, 2016;Pereira et al, 2017;Syphard and Keeley, 2015). According to the Portuguese Rural Fire Database , currently available for the 1980-2014 period, although the limited confidence in the statistics for the first few years, only 32.8% of the TNF in Portugal have known cause, namely 0.6% caused by lightning, 23.1% by negligence and 76.4% intentionally.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negligent and intentional fires in Portugal: Spatial distribution characterization

Parente

Pereira

Amraoui

et al. 2018

Science of The Total Environment

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In the European context, Portugal is the country with the highest number of wildfires and the second with more burnt area. The vast majority of these events are of human origin, whether caused by accident, negligence or arson, reason why it is particularly important to know the regime of these wildfires for forest and wildfire management activities. The study focuses on the most recent years of 2001-2014, when wildfire ignition's coordinates are known, and aims to identify and characterize the wildfire incidence spatial patterns of variability as well as their main drivers. After grouping wildfires with human cause into negligent and intentional, we studied their spatial distribution in terms of normalized number of wildfires (NNF) and burnt area (NBA) in the five Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics II regions of mainland Portugal. Results disclose an uneven spatial distribution of the fire incidence, characterized by a south-north gradient, much higher values in Norte region and more evident for intentional than for negligent wildfires. Human and biophysical drivers strongly influence NNF and NBA, at regional and national scales. Distribution patterns at regional scale, for negligent and intentional wildfires are quite different from entire mainland and all wildfires. Drivers' influence is higher for intentional than for negligent wildfires, for southern than for northern regions and for NBA than for NNF. The leading drivers of NNF are distance to roads (d) population density (pd) and altitude (h) while of NBA are h, d, slope and pd, and this influence is higher for intentional than for negligent wildfires.

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“…Forest fires are considered a rather complex natural process and one of the most crucial environmental issues in Europe [1], resulting in severe ecological, economic, and social consequences [2]. Most of the total European fire-affected areas are located in the Mediterranean countries during the summer season [2][3][4]. For example, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and Greece accounted for 78% of the total burnt area and 84% of the total number of fires registered in Europe in the 2000-2013 period, according to Burned Areas Perimeters dataset of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) [4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Midterm Fire Danger Prediction Using Satellite Imagery and Auxiliary Thematic Layers

et al. 2019

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Wildfires constitute a significant environmental pressure in Europe, particularly in the Mediterranean countries. The prediction of fire danger is essential for sustainable forest fire management since it provides critical information for designing effective prevention measures and for facilitating response planning to potential fire events. This study presents a new midterm fire danger index (MFDI) using satellite and auxiliary geographic data. The proposed methodology is based on estimations of a dry fuel connectivity measure calculated from the Moderate Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) time-series data, which are combined with biophysical and topological variables to obtain accurate fire ignition danger predictions for the following eight days. The index’s accuracy was assessed using historical fire data from four large wildfires in Greece. The results showcase that the index predicted high fire danger (≥3 on a scale within [ 1 , 4 ] ) within the identified fire ignition areas, proving its strong potential for deriving reliable estimations of fire danger, despite the fact that no meteorological measurements or forecasts are used for its calculation.

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Fire on the Hills: An Environmental History of Fires and Fire Policy in Mediterranean-Type Ecosystems

Cited by 5 publications

References 29 publications

Fire-Regulating Services and Disservices With an Application to the Haifa-Carmel Region in Israel

Fire-Regulating Services and Disservices With an Application to the Haifa-Carmel Region in Israel

Negligent and intentional fires in Portugal: Spatial distribution characterization

Midterm Fire Danger Prediction Using Satellite Imagery and Auxiliary Thematic Layers

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