Global assessment of rural–urban interface in Portugal related to land cover changes

Abstract

Abstract. The rural-urban interface (RUI), known as the area where structures and other human developments meet or intermingle with wildland and rural area, is at present a central focus of wildfire policy and its mapping is crucial for wildfire management. In the Mediterranean Basin, humans cause the vast majority of fires and fire risk is particularly high in the proximity of infrastructure and of rural/wildland areas. RUI's extension changes under the pressure of environmental and anthropogenic factors, such as urban growth, fragmentation of rural areas, deforestation and, more in general, land use/land cover change (LULCC). As with other Mediterranean countries, Portugal has experienced significant LULCC in the last decades in response to migration, rural abandonment, ageing of population and trends associated with the high socioeconomic development. In the present study, we analyzed the LULCC occurring in this country in the 1990-2012 period with the main objective of investigating how these changes affected RUI's evolution. Moreover, we performed a qualitative and quantitative characterization of burnt areas within the RUI in relation to the observed changes. Obtained results disclose important LULCC and reveal their spatial distribution, which is far from uniform within the territory. A significant increase in artificial surfaces was registered near the main metropolitan communities of the northwest, littoral-central and southern regions, whilst the abandonment of agricultural land near the inland urban areas led to an increase in uncultivated semi-natural and forest areas. Within agricultural areas, heterogeneous patches suffered the greatest changes and were the main contributors to the increase in urban areas; moreover, this land cover class, together with forests, was highly affected by wildfires in terms of burnt area. Finally, from this analysis and during the investigated period, it appears that RUI increased in Portugal by more than two-thirds, while the total burnt area decreased by one-third; nevertheless, burnt area within RUI doubled, which emphasizes the significance of RUI monitoring for land and fire managers.

A Machine Learning-Based Approach for Wildfire Susceptibility Mapping. The Case Study of the Liguria Region in Italy

“…The trigger is a local condition that causes a risk to occur if the area is susceptible to that risk, while the susceptibility is assessed based on predisposing factors, stable over time. The proximity to road and pathway networks and to urban and recreation areas are most frequently mentioned as predisposing human factors for wildfire [37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. As regards geo-environmental variables, those related to vegetation type and topography are the most significant drivers, especially in Mediterranean-type regions [45][46][47][48].…”

Spatial variability in the relation between fire weather and burned area: patterns and drivers in Portugal

“…1 of AEMET, ( 2011)), in the sense that regions with higher (lower) DSRp80TBA or DSRp90TBA present Csb (Csa) type of climate. LULC is also an important wildfire factor in Portugal (Barros and Pereira, Aranha and Amraoui, 2014;Leuenberger et al, 2018;Tonini, Parente and Pereira, 2018). Therefore, it is not surprising the high similarity between the spatial patterns of DSRp80TBA or DSRp90TBA and the LULC maps for Portugal (e.g., see Figure 4 of ).…”

“…Topography and uncultivated land were significant factors determining burnt area, in a study for the 1980-2014 period conducted at municipal level (Nunes et al, 2016). The burnt area within the rural-urban interface expanded from 1990 to 2012 (Tonini et al, 2018). There is evidence of an extending urban-rural interface, which contributes to an increase in fire incidence, in north-western Portugal, where agriculture is the dominant land cover type and urban area doubled since 1990 (Silva et al, 2019).…”

Spatial Assessment of Wildfires Susceptibility in Santa Cruz (Bolivia) Using Random Forest

“…These hazards can cause significant losses in terms of vegetation, houses, and human and animal lives [1][2][3]. Wildfires are becoming more frequent and extended in the last years, mainly under the influence of climate changes [4][5][6] and land use management [7][8][9][10]. Hence, the need to study them through their modelization, in terms of both fire spread and fire risk/susceptibility assessment, and to understand how to limit the disastrous effects they can have on the environment and on the socioeconomic tissue.…”