Changes in landscape fire-hazard during the second half of the 20th century: Agriculture abandonment and the changing role of driving factors

Viedma, Olga; Moity, Nicolás; Moreno, José M.

doi:10.1016/j.agee.2015.04.011

Cited by 99 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…This relationship is evident in the recent trend of agricultural abandonment and increasing fire hazard across southern Europe. In fact, much of this increasing fire hazard is likely going to occur close to human settlements (Viedma et al 2015), which suggests that the findings in this study may be directly applicable in those regions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Setting priorities for private land conservation in fire-prone landscapes: Are fire risk reduction and biodiversity conservation competing or compatible objectives?

Syphard¹,

Butsic²,

Bar‐Massada³

et al. 2016

E&S

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ABSTRACT. Although wildfire plays an important role in maintaining biodiversity in many ecosystems, fire management to protect human assets is often carried out by different agencies than those tasked for conserving biodiversity. In fact, fire risk reduction and biodiversity conservation are often viewed as competing objectives. Here we explored the role of management through private land conservation and asked whether we could identify private land acquisition strategies that fulfill the mutual objectives of biodiversity conservation and fire risk reduction, or whether the maximization of one objective comes at a detriment to the other. Using a fixed budget and number of homes slated for development, we simulated 20 years of housing growth under alternative conservation selection strategies, and then projected the mean risk of fires destroying structures and the area and configuration of important habitat types in San Diego County, California, USA. We found clear differences in both fire risk projections and biodiversity impacts based on the way conservation lands are prioritized for selection, but these differences were split between two distinct groupings. If no conservation lands were purchased, or if purchases were prioritized based on cost or likelihood of development, both the projected fire risk and biodiversity impacts were much higher than if conservation lands were purchased in areas with high fire hazard or high species richness. Thus, conserving land focused on either of the two objectives resulted in nearly equivalent mutual benefits for both. These benefits not only resulted from preventing development in sensitive areas, but they were also due to the different housing patterns and arrangements that occurred as development was displaced from those areas. Although biodiversity conflicts may still arise using other fire management strategies, this study shows that mutual objectives can be attained through land-use planning in this region. These results likely generalize to any place where high species richness overlaps with hazardous wildland vegetation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Setting priorities for private land conservation in fire-prone landscapes: Are fire risk reduction and biodiversity conservation competing or compatible objectives?

Syphard¹,

Butsic²,

Bar‐Massada³

et al. 2016

E&S

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…As the recent observed changes in wildland fire regimes are increasingly affecting human and ecological resources, a need iForest 9: 195-204 199 has arisen to develop quantitative strategies and approaches for fire risk management, including methods for risk assessment (exposure and effects) and mitigation of fire effects (Miller & Ager 2013, Salis et al 2013b, Viedma et al 2015. The effects of fire on landscape may vary from region to region because of differences in regeneration patterns among main land cover types, topographic constraints and local fire histories (Viedma 2008, Bradstock et al 2010.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fire occurrence zoning from local to global scale in the European Mediterranean basin: implications for multi-scale fire management and policy

Koutsias¹,

Allgöwer²,

Kalabokidis³

et al. 2016

iForest

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This study proposes and evaluates a relatively new concept for fire occurrence zoning based on documented historical fire records. The proposed method creates continuous kernel density surfaces based on wildland fire ignition observations. Kernels have the advantage of directly producing density estimates that are not influenced by grid size or localization effects. Within this scheme, kernel density surfaces have been created and reclassified to construct fire occurrence zones at local to global scales in the Mediterranean Basin. Specifically, fire occurrence zones were created for the European scale (European Mediterranean Basin), national scale (Greece), regional scale (Peloponnese, Greece) and local scale (Chalkidiki, Greece). To evaluate fire occurrence zones, we compared the observed with the expected distribution of the number of fires within these zones using a Monte Carlo randomization test, finding that these numbers were statistically different in all cases. The deviations observed from the expected distributions towards the high occurrence zone indicated their successful assessment and value. In this paper, we further discuss their potential role and use for multi-scale fire management and policy in a European context.

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“…Urbanization, and the consequent abandonment of rural areas, has caused the expansion of this interface, increasing the probability of wildfires to affect houses and infrastructures (Theobald and Romme, 2007;Zhang et al, 2008). There is strong evidence that the expansion of the urban and WUI areas has increased the fire density and related risk (Fox et al, 2015;Gallardo et al, 2016;Lampin-Maillet et al, 2010;Viedma et al, 2015), as well as the cost of protecting houses from fire (Pellizzaro et al, 2012b), and has an impact on biodiversity and ecosystems (Radeloff et al, 2005). Researchers have developed several geospatial mod-els for defining and mapping the WUI, taking into account all the above-mentioned factors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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Changes in landscape fire-hazard during the second half of the 20th century: Agriculture abandonment and the changing role of driving factors

Cited by 99 publications

References 60 publications

Setting priorities for private land conservation in fire-prone landscapes: Are fire risk reduction and biodiversity conservation competing or compatible objectives?

Setting priorities for private land conservation in fire-prone landscapes: Are fire risk reduction and biodiversity conservation competing or compatible objectives?

Fire occurrence zoning from local to global scale in the European Mediterranean basin: implications for multi-scale fire management and policy

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

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