Reducing the climate change-induced risk of uncontrollable fires in landscapes under nature management, with severe impacts on landscape and society, is particularly urgent in densely-populated and fragmented areas. Reducing fire risk in such areas requires active involvement of a wide diversity of stakeholders. This research letter investigates stakeholders’ needs with regard to fire risk reduction in the Veluwe area in the Netherlands. This densely populated landscape is a popular tourist attraction, and it is one of the most fire-prone landscapes of the Netherlands, with abundant fuels and human ignition sources. We draw upon seven in-depth qualitative interviews with key stakeholders in the Veluwe area, which we situate in a wider review of existing literature. Our analysis demonstrates that the rising incidence of uncontrollable fires poses four types of new challenges to these stakeholders in the Veluwe area. First, stakeholders express the need to reshape existing policy tools and develop novel ones that create synergies between existing policy-priorities (e.g. biodiversity conservation) and fire risk reduction. Second, stakeholders argue for a critical rethinking of the value of landscapes in society, and the diverse roles that fire may play in landscape management research and practice. Third, developing such policy tools requires new modalities and platforms for multi-stakeholder and multi-level collaboration, which are currently lacking because the current and expected future risk of uncontrollable fire is unprecedented. And fourth, the development of effective policy tools requires new knowledge that is interdisciplinary, sensitive towards the local social and ecological characteristics of the area, and which approaches current fire risk challenges and their possible solutions dynamically. While our stakeholder analysis is specific to the Veluwe area in the Netherlands, our findings are also likely to be relevant to other fire-prone nature areas in fragmented landscapes, particularly in Northwestern Europe.

<p>Risk assessments and disaster management are generally approached from a single-hazard perspective, ignoring the spatial and temporal connections and feedback loops that are involved when consecutive disasters occur. Not only can the total impact of a multi-hazard event differ from the sum of the impacts of the individual events, but the response and recovery process can also be more challenging for multi-hazard events when compared to a single-hazard disaster. Depletion of financial and human resources after a first hazard may for instance increase people’s vulnerability at the time of a second event. This was demonstrated in northern Mozambique, where tropical cyclones Idai and Kenneth made landfall only six weeks apart, early 2019. Despite continued high needs and dependence on humanitarian aid after the second event, UN agencies and partners struggled to provide additional support, due to exhausted stocks and funds after their initial response efforts to Idai. </p> <p>This study (that is part of the MYRIAD-EU project), focuses on post-disaster recovery, which is an often overlooked and misunderstood component of the disaster management cycle. A single-hazard approach to understanding recovery does not sufficiently reflect the complexity that is involved in multi-hazard events due to the potential feedbacks and interactions between hazards and their effects. While several recent studies have made efforts to improve our understanding of the relationships between single natural hazards and the recovery thereafter, recovery dynamics after multi-hazard events are still poorly understood. Additionally, the studies that have looked into recovery after natural disasters are often focussed on a single hazard type or limited set of extreme events in a specific region. To address this knowledge gap, this study sets out to compare economic recovery after multi-hazard events and single-hazard events on a continental scale.</p> <p>Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite Nighttime Light (VIIRS NTL) data (2013-2022) are used as a proxy for economic recovery. To characterize recovery after different single- and consecutive events, accounting for geological, meteorological, and hydrological hazards, monthly changes in night light intensity are computed. A comparison of the recovery profiles of single- and multi-hazard events will then result in an improved understanding of the different trends and dynamics that are involved with economic recovery after multi-hazard events. The results of this study can be used by policy-makers and aid organizations to improve their disaster management strategies. Moreover, the resulting characterisation of economic recovery after single- and multi-hazard events will support future research into the identification of socio-economic factors that affect the recovery in a multi-hazard context.</p>

Sedimentary records depicting significant variability in climate and carbon cycling across the early Paleogene have emerged over the last two decades. Continuous, long-term, high-resolution records mostly derive from deep-sea drill cores, and only few derive from continental margin locations. Here we examine lower Paleogene marls and chalks collected from a core (RH-323) in the Northern Negev Desert (Southern Israel). The studied sediments accumulated on a continental slope of the southern Tethys at ~500-700 m paleodepth and did not undergo deep burial. We analyzed bulk carbonate stable carbon and oxygen isotopes and bulk magnetic susceptibility. The resulting records can be aligned with those from elsewhere and include the Paleocene Carbon Isotope Maximum (PCIM), Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) and Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (EECO). An obvious realization is a concurrence between local lithological variations and major climate and carbon cycle changes. This has been highlighted for sedimentary sequences elsewhere, but the relations differ in the Negev, such that carbonate rich intervals mark the PCIM and PETM, and a transition from marl to chalk initiates the EECO. Overall, the relatively pristine and immature sediment records in southern Israel likely provide potential for high-resolution paleoclimate and carbon cycle reconstructions during a crucial time interval and in a crucial part of the world.