Potential impact of climate change on fire risk in the Mediterranean area

Abstract

In this study, output of the Hadley Centre Regional Circulation Model (RCM) (HadRM3P, 0.44°× 0.44°resolution) was used as input to the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) for the present and 2 future IPCC climate scenarios (Special Report on Emissions Scenarios [SRES], A2 and B2 scenarios). The aim was to investigate the effects of climate change on fire risk (number of days with fire risk, length of fire risk season, etc.) for the EU Mediterranean countries. Results indicated a general increase in fire risk in both future scenarios over the whole study area. The increase in fire risk was mainly due to 3 components: (1) increase in the number of years with fire risk; (2) increase in the length of the season with fire risk; (3) increase of extreme events (e.g. total number of days with FWI > 45 and episodes with FWI > 45 for 7 consecutive days) during the fire season. As expected, A2 scenario showed a greater increase in risk than B2 scenario. These general increases in fire risk may have a very strong impact in areas where forest land cover is high (e.g. the Alps region in Italy, the Pyrenees in Spain and mountains of the Balkan region).

Climate versus human-driven fire regimes in Mediterranean landscapes: the Holocene record of Lago dell’Accesa (Tuscany, Italy)

“…Moreno, 1998;Buhk and Hensen, 2006;Campo et al, 2006;Pausas, 2006;Shakesby and Doerr, 2006;Baeza et al, 2007). The role of fire for future ecosystem dynamics is underlined by the evidence that predicted climate warming will probably affect future fire dynamics Cramer, 2001;Moriondo et al, 2006;Running, 2006), given that fire severity and fire-surface extent are also climatically driven (Pausas, 2004;Keeley et al, 2006). However, many lines of evidence show that fire regime changes are not linearly linked to climatic change, for instance declines of fire frequency as a consequence of climatic warming are documented by long-term ecological and modelling studies from the Boreal biome (e.g.…”

Land Use and Climate Change

“…Williams et al (2010) find that about 2.7% of U.S. southwestern forest and woodland area experienced substantial mortality due to wildfires between 1984 and 2006. Moriondo et al (2006) find an increase in fire risk in the EU Mediterranean countries, especially in the Alps region of Italy, the Pyrenees of Spain, and the Balkan mountains. Brown, Hall, and Westerling (2004) argue that climate change will exacerbate forest fires, and that new fire and fuels management strategies may be needed.…”

Integration of Fire Risk in a Sustainable Forest Management Model

“…An increase in temperature will increase the dryness of the fuel and reduce relative humidity, the risk factors associated with low precipitation [25]. More recently, for instance, studies such as [26] try to identify the most suitable weather conditions for fires using different combinations of input variables.…”