Modeling temporal changes in human-caused wildfires in Mediterranean Europe based on Land Use-Land Cover interfaces

Vilar, Lara; Camia, Andrea; San-Miguel-Ayanz, Jesús; Martín, M. Pilar

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2016.07.020

Cited by 69 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Finally, we adopted a buffer width of 1 km, corresponding to two times the spatial resolution of CLC inventories. This value is in line with the values used in other countries for WUI mapping (Radeloff et al, 2005;Vilar et al, 2016) and, at the same time, is large enough to avoid bias in the results, due to the CLC spatial resolution. The other agricultural areas (i.e., arable lands, permanent crops and pastures) were not included in the RUI definition since these vegetated land covers are usually well managed, mostly irrigated and frequently constitute an obstruction to fire spread.…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 82%

“…As regards the RUI definition and mapping model developed in the present study, different buffer widths from 100 m to 2 km were tested, resulting in areas of different size. Vilar et al (2016) applied a buffer width of 100 m, corresponding to the median of the distances defined in each country's national legislation (Portugal, Spain, southern France and Italy) for protection against wildfires, which makes brush clearing obligatory within a certain radius around each house located close to forests or scrublands. In the US, WUI was defined as developed areas in the vicinity of wildland vegetation and mapped considering census blocks above 6.17 housing units km −2 that are within a distance of 2.4 km from wildland vegetation (Radeloff et al, 2005).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On average, about 95 % of wildfires with known causes in Europe during the period 1995 to 2010 (corresponding to about 70 % of the total number of recorded events) were associated with human activities (Ganteaume et al, 2013). Only a small percentage M. Tonini et al: Global assessment of rural-urban interface in Portugal of wildfires (e.g., 1 % in Portugal and 5 % in Spain) were naturally caused by lighting (Mateus and Fernandes, 2014;Vilar et al, 2016). Wildfires have long been considered a dynamic ecological factor and an efficient agricultural and landscape management tool.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Tonini

Parente

Pereira

2018

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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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.

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Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 82%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Tonini

Parente

Pereira

2018

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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“…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).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…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). Despite its smaller land area in comparison with other Mediterranean countries, Portugal is the European country with the highest total NF (hereafter, TNF) and the second largest total BA (hereafter, TBA) .…”

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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A zero‐inflated Poisson spatial model with misreporting for wildfire occurrences in southern Italian municipalities

Arima,

Calculli,

Pollice

2024

Environmetrics

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We propose a Poisson model for zero‐inflated spatial counts contaminated by measurement error: we accommodate the excess of zeroes in the counts, consider the possible under/over reporting of the response and account for the neighboring structure of spatial areal units. Bayesian inferences are provided by MCMC implementation through the R package NIMBLE. To evaluate the model performance, a simulation study is carried out under configurations that allow for structured and unstructured spatial random effects. The proposed model is applied to investigate the distribution of the counts of wildfire occurrences in the municipal areas of two neighboring Italian regions for the summer season 2021. Fire counts are obtained by processing MODIS satellite data, while several socio‐economic and environmental‐driven potential risk factors are also considered in the model formulation. Data from multiple sources with different spatial support are processed in order to comply with the municipal units. Results suggest the appropriateness of the approach and provide some insights on the features of wildfire occurrences.

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Modeling temporal changes in human-caused wildfires in Mediterranean Europe based on Land Use-Land Cover interfaces

Cited by 69 publications

References 29 publications

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

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

Negligent and intentional fires in Portugal: Spatial distribution characterization

A zero‐inflated Poisson spatial model with misreporting for wildfire occurrences in southern Italian municipalities

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