Land cover fire proneness in Europe

Abstract

Aim of study: The characterization of the fuels is an important aspect of the fire regime in each specific ecosystem while fire is an important disturbance for global vegetation dynamics. This study aims to identify and characterize the spatial and temporal evolution of the fire incidence and of the vegetation types that are most affected by forest fires in Europe, with emphasis on the mixed forests.Area of study: Europe. Material and methods:Corine Land Cover maps for 2000 and 2006 (CLC2000, CLC2006) and burned area (BA) perimeters, from 2000 to 2013 in Europe are combined to access the spatial and temporal evolution of the types of vegetation that are most affected by fires using geostatistics and Geographical Information System (GIS) techniques.Main results: The spatial and temporal distribution of BA perimeters, vegetation and burnt vegetation by fires was performed and different statistics were obtained for Mediterranean and northern Europe, confirming the usefulness of the used land cover classification. A fire proneness index (FPI) is proposed to assess the fire selectivity of land cover classes, to quantify and compare the propensity of vegetation classes and countries to fire.Research highlights: Mixed forests area is 5% of total European area but has increased 2.1% from 2000 to 2006, while other forest types followed an opposite trend. FPI for scrubs is twice (quadruple) of the value for the forests (agricultural areas) except during the occurrence of mega fire events, when the LCC of forest present higher FPI than the LCC of scrub.

Negligent and intentional fires in Portugal: Spatial distribution characterization

“…Most affected CLC classes in terms of NBA were Heterogeneous agricultural areas, Scrubs and Forests. Similar findings were obtained by Pereira et al (2014) for 2000-2013 period although using a different fire dataset. Patterns of normalized fire incidence statistics put in evidence the role of Artificial surfaces in NNF distribution for both negligent and intentional causes ( Fig.…”

“…This may be explained with the use of fire as a management tool in Agricultural areas Moreira et al, 2010). It is also important to take into account the large size of Agricultural and Forest areas in Portugal, which may be the reason why these CLC variables are not all necessarily selected in models of fire occurrence in Mediterranean Europe (Fernandes et al, 2016;Oliveira et al, 2012;Vasconcelos et al, 2001) and the lower fire proneness of agricultural areas in comparison to scrublands and forests (Pereira et al, 2014).…”

“…1c) cartography has a minimum 25 ha map unit and includes built up areas, agricultural and semi natural areas, wetlands and water bodies (Caetano et al, 2009;EEA, 2017). A more detailed information and characteristics about CORINE Land Cover map may be found in and Pereira et al (2014).…”

“…In the last decades, Europe registered a high number of fires (hereafter, NF) and burnt area (hereafter, BA) with different spatial and temporal trends as the result of human-driven fuel transformations and climate change (Fernandes, 2013;Pereira et al, 2013Pereira et al, , 2014San-Miguel-Ayanz et al, 2016;Vilar et al, 2016). The society and the scientific community regard this phenomenon as a natural ecological factor and, at least in some cases, a natural/human disaster (Nunes et al, 2016;Vilar et al, 2016).…”

“…This type of climate favours the emergence and growth of vegetation during the wet and humid season as well as water and thermal stress during the dry season, which helps to understand the vast majority of NF and BA occur during the noticeable summer fire season (Amraoui et al, 2015;Pereira et al, 2005;Trigo et al, 2016). The occurrence of extreme weather (e.g., heat waves) and climate variability events (e.g., drought), which also tend to be more frequent and intense during the summer fire season, are main contributors to this sharp seasonal character of the fire incidence in Portugal Pereira et al, 2014Pereira et al, , 2005Trigo et al, 2006).…”