Forest fires hotspots in EU Southern Member States and North Africa: a review of causes and motives

Abstract

A navegação consulta e descarregamento dos títulos inseridos nas Bibliotecas Digitais UC Digitalis, UC Pombalina e UC Impactum, pressupõem a aceitação plena e sem reservas dos Termos e Condições de Uso destas Bibliotecas Digitais, disponíveis em https://digitalis.uc.pt/pt-pt/termos.Conforme exposto nos referidos Termos e Condições de Uso, o descarregamento de títulos de acesso restrito requer uma licença válida de autorização devendo o utilizador aceder ao(s) documento(s) a partir de um endereço de IP da instituição detentora da supramencionada licença.Ao utilizador é apenas permitido o descarregamento para uso pessoal, pelo que o emprego do(s) título(s) descarregado(s) para outro fim, designadamente comercial, carece de autorização do respetivo autor ou editor da obra. Na medida em que todas as obras da UC Digitalis se encontram protegidas pelo Código do Direito de Autor e Direitos Conexos e demais legislação aplicável, toda a cópia, parcial ou total, deste documento, nos casos em que é legalmente admitida, deverá conter ou fazer-se acompanhar por este aviso. Forest fires hotspots in EU Southern AbstractDespite enhanced fire suppression efforts the number of fires has increased in Europe and in North Africa, above all in Portugal, and the extinction oriented model of fire control is no more suitable to change the trend. Hence, the need of shifting from a reactive model grounded on a fast and strong reaction, to more pro-active procedures supported by prevention, aimed not only to fuel reduction but also to gradually intervene on the causes of fires. In this perspective, a fair knowledge of man-caused fire outbreak motives is a crucial point. This paper intended to compare and interpret those motives in Portugal, Italy and Algeria obtained through the perception of experts (forest experts and other practitioners). In this research new data was collected in the North Region of Portugal and data already available for Algeria and Italy was commented.The results of the research highlighted great similarities of the main fire causes and motives identified by the experts from the case-studies in the three countries. Fire outbreak motives are not related with deliberate fire setting but, mainly, with the use of fire in rural activities. Fire is a manageable tool that is still needed in many agro-forestry systems. One of the findings of this study pointed out the need to design and develop specific prevention programs able to reduce fire incidence and promote practices more respectful of the tradition and needs of rural communities, often criminalized for their habitudes of using fire as a multipurpose tool. Deliberate fire can represent isolated and sporadic actions however, some of them result from organized and even criminal interests. Finally, this paper argues that improved fire prevention to address the roots of fire problems cannot be achieved without a deep knowledge of the complexity and diversity of the fire outbreak motives.

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

“…Compiling a collective judgment from a series of questionnaires is the basis of the Delphi method, an iterative process used to collect and distill the informed judgments of experts in the case of insufficient data and/or incomplete knowledge on cause and effect in regard to phenomena under study [30]. This method has been previously used in the field of forest fires to explore the current state of fire communication [31] and in the analysis of forest fire causes in Europe e.g., [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] and in EU/MENA countries [40,41].…”