Forest Fire Causes and Motivations in the Southern and South-Eastern Europe through Experts’ Perception and Applications to Current Policies

Tedim, Fantina; Leone, Vittorio; Lovreglio, Raffaella; Xanthopoulos, Gavriil; Amil, María Luisa Chas; Ganteaume, Anne; Efe, Recep; Royé, Dominic; Fuerst-Bjeliš, Borna; Nikolov, Nikola S.; Musa, Snježana; Milenković, Milan; Correia, Fernando; Conedera, Marco; Pezzatti, Gianni Boris

doi:10.3390/f13040562

Cited by 14 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Countries in the Southern and Southeastern Europe are expected to be heavily affected [6], [7]. Fire occurrence may have multiple causes [8], but often it can be triggered by human negligence and malicious actions [9], [10]. Their environmental impacts include loss of habitat for wildlife, as well as deterioration of ecosystem services (loss of forest stand biomass and timber, production of air pollutants from fire smoke, etc.).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Harvesting remote sensing observations for quantifying burned area and built-up losses from the 2021 wildfires in Greece

Paganias,

Pappas

2023

Remote Sensing Technologies and Applications in Urban Environments VIII

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Mediterranean regions are heavily exposed to wildfires that can result in devastating casualties and infrastructure damage. Greece has been particularly affected by wildfires during recent years and the accurate mapping of the fire-exposed areas is essential. This can enhance our process understanding on such natural hazards, also supporting practitioners and decision-makers. Here, we combined remote sensing observations from the Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite with GIS techniques to delineate the spatial extent and built-up losses at three example locations over Greece that were substantially affected by the summer 2021 wildfires, namely the regions of Northern Evia, Eastern Attica, and Achaia. The overall burned areas, as quantified with the pre- and post-fire Normalized Burn Ratio (i.e., dNBR), ranged from about 3 km2 to more than 500 km2 , while the exposed built-up features (buildings, roads, etc.) vary between the study regions following site-specific characteristics (built-up density, urban/rural interface, topography, etc.). The combination of publicly available remote sensing Earth observations and GIS techniques allowed us to obtain quantitative insights on the urban features exposed to these wildfires and their variability between the examined locations.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Harvesting remote sensing observations for quantifying burned area and built-up losses from the 2021 wildfires in Greece

Paganias,

Pappas

2023

Remote Sensing Technologies and Applications in Urban Environments VIII

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“…Mega fire events pose great threats to rural areas and their surroundings. Many researchers have also stated that atmospheric conditions had an intentional fire effect on wildfire events in Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece in recent years across the Mediterranean basin (Ex: San-Miguel- Ayanz et al, 2013;Vilar et al, 2009;Tedim et al,2022;Baccui et al, 2021). In addition, wildfires are an important threat to the forests of Turkey, as in many parts of the Mediterranean Basin.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forest fires in southern Turkey July-August 2021

Acar¹,

Gönençgil²

2023

rcli

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Extreme weather events are experienced more frequently across the earth due to the effects of climate change. The high frequency of extreme weather events increases vulnerability in sensitive areas. In the Mediterranean Basin, which is one of the most sensitive areas, many countries have experienced wildfires in recent years. Turkey is one of the countries where forest fires occur frequently in the Mediterranean basin. Although the causes of the fire vary over the years, the problems caused by forest fires draw attention every year. Since 1990, there have been many forest fires across the country and the most areal losses caused by the Fires occurred in 1994, 2000 and 2008. The largest forest fires after these dates occurred in the summer of 2021. The area where Turkey is most sensitive to fire is the Mediterranean climate region. Most of the fires, especially in this area, occur in an unnatural way such as negligence-accident, unsolved and intentional. The control mechanism in the spatial expansion of fires mostly depends on atmospheric conditions. Within the scope of the study, it was aimed to draw attention to the atmospheric conditions during the period of wildfires in many parts of Turkey in the summer of 2021 for various reasons. According to the calculations, the air temperatures before the start of the fire in the provinces of Antalya and Muğla are above the long-term averages of the stations here. In addition, the effects of the heat wave were observed at many stations before the fire.

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“…However, a number of studies point to a relationship between wildfires and the traditional Fire 2023, 6, 210 2 of 15 use of fire, particularly for range management purposes [13][14][15]. This type of fire use may constitute a negligent or intentional cause of wildfire, depending on each country's legislation [16]. Other studies associate the replacement of agriculture by extensive livestock production and the need to use fire as a tool for pasture maintenance as the origin of the increase in wildfire frequency [17,18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pastoral Burning and Its Contribution to the Fire Regime of Alto Minho, Portugal

Oliveira

Fernandes

2023

Fire

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Alto Minho (in northwestern Iberia) is one of the European regions most affected by fires. Many of these fires originate from rangeland management of Atlantic heathlands, and, while being illegal, often are not actively suppressed. In this study, pastoral fires (autumn-to-spring fires unrecorded by authorities), spring wildfires, and summer wildfires were independently mapped and dated from remote sensing. Alto Minho burned at a mean annual rate of 5.0% of the territory between 2001 and 2020. Pastoral burning totalled 40,788 hectares during the period, accounting for 20% of the total burnt area. Rangeland burning occurs mostly from December to April, the rainiest months that guarantee the conditions for pasture renewal and fire self-extinction. The mean fire return interval of pastoral burning is slightly higher than that of wildfires (13 years vs. 11 years), except in part of the inner mountains where it dominates fire activity. Pastoral fires are more frequent and largely prevail over wildfires in the parishes with higher livestock quantities. Conversely, the largest wildfires and higher summer burnt areas correspond with very low livestock and nearly non-existing pastoral fires. Traditional fire knowledge should not be overlooked by fire management, as it contributes to more sustainable fire regimes and ecosystems.

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Forest Fire Causes and Motivations in the Southern and South-Eastern Europe through Experts’ Perception and Applications to Current Policies

Cited by 14 publications

References 57 publications

Harvesting remote sensing observations for quantifying burned area and built-up losses from the 2021 wildfires in Greece

Harvesting remote sensing observations for quantifying burned area and built-up losses from the 2021 wildfires in Greece

Forest fires in southern Turkey July-August 2021

Pastoral Burning and Its Contribution to the Fire Regime of Alto Minho, Portugal

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