Fire regime changes and major driving forces in Spain from 1968 to 2010

Moreno, M. Vanesa; Conedera, Marco; Chuvieco, Emilio; Pezzatti, Gianni Boris

doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2013.08.005

Cited by 128 publications

(109 citation statements)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

100

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Clay minerals are involved in most of the organo-mineral associations of the soil; therefore, C and N contents increase with the clay content [37,38]. This phenomenon was verified in our study though a preliminary texture analysis of each horizon and has been previously been described in other studies [39].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

Is Mechanized Harvesting of Shrubs Grown for Energy Purposes Environmentally Sustainable?

González-González¹,

Sixto²,

González³

et al. 2018

Forests

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Mechanized harvesting of shrub formations as part of sustainable forest management not only helps reduce the risk of forest fires in Mediterranean environments but also provides economic benefit from the extracted biomass, contributing to the development of the bioeconomy. However, these mechanized operations require an environmental impact assessment to identify the short-term impacts, both positive and negative. This is especially important in the Mediterranean basin given the specific climatic conditions which exist. In this study, the environmental impact of mechanized shrub harvesting is analyzed in relation to (i) changes in biodiversity and in the presence and growth of species; (ii) physical and chemical properties of the soil; and (iii) changes in forest fire risk. For this purpose, a pre-harvest inventory was conducted and post-harvest monitoring schedules of 1-and 2-year durations were established in three characteristic Mediterranean shrubland formations located in the northern-central area of the Iberian Peninsula. Our results reveal that the recovery rates in biodiversity indices after harvesting were very high, with values ranging from 30 to 70% depending on the site. Two years after harvesting, the species coverage was similar to the pre-harvest scenario in some locations, although not with regards to height, the ericaceous species being those with the greatest sprouting capacity. Significant changes in the physical and chemical properties of soils were also observed. In this regard, negative impacts such as soil compaction or slight acidification were identified at some sites. However, positive effects were also found such as an increment in carbon and nitrogen content after harvesting, along with increased litter quantity a year from the clearing operation due to biomass residue left on the ground after harvesting. Furthermore, mechanical harvesting effectively modified fire behavior in all the shrub formations 2 years after clearing, with a notable reduction in fire risk at all the studied sites.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

Is Mechanized Harvesting of Shrubs Grown for Energy Purposes Environmentally Sustainable?

González-González¹,

Sixto²,

González³

et al. 2018

Forests

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…1), following the criteria established by the Spanish Environmental Ministry in their annual fire reports (MA-GRAMA, 2002. These regions portray homogeneous areas in terms of wildfire activity by merging entire provinces or autonomous communities and have been previously used on other recent works like Moreno et al (2014). The spatial coverage of these regions is similar to other zoning proposals like Sousa et al (2015) or Trigo et al (2016), being also based on NUT3S aggregations, although they include Portugal as well.…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 87%

“…One of the advantages of this technique is its robustness to deal with outliers. In the context of wildfire science, the Pettitt test has previously been applied to detect fire regime shifts as a consequence of policy and socioeconomic development in Pezzatti et al (2013) and Moreno et al (2014).…”

Section: Change Point Detectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even though some studies dealing with the temporal dimension of wildfires do exist (Serra et al, 2013), most of them present some limitations, such as a short time series (less than 20 years of data). Meanwhile, analyses using a longer time series do not include many fire regime features and stay with the overall number of fires and burned area (Pausas, 2004;Pausas and Fernández-Muñoz 2012;Moreno et al, 2014). Specifically, we stress the importance of assessing the evolution of large fires (fires with more than 500 ha burned; San-Miguel-Ayanz et al, 2013) and the potential differences relating the ignition source of a wildfire, either natural or human caused.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Exploring spatial–temporal dynamics of fire regime features in mainland Spain

Jiménez-Ruano

Mimbrero

Fernández

2017

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. This paper explores spatial-temporal dynamics in fire regime features, such as fire frequency, burnt area, large fires and natural-and human-caused fires, as an essential part of fire regime characterization. Changes in fire features are analysed at different spatial -regional and provincial/NUTS3 -levels, together with summer and winter temporal scales, using historical fire data from Spain for the period 1974-2013. Temporal shifts in fire features are investigated by means of change point detection procedures -Pettitt test, AMOC (at most one change), PELT (pruned exact linear time) and BinSeg (binary segmentation) -at a regional level to identify changes in the time series of the features. A trend analysis was conducted using the Mann-Kendall and Sen's slope tests at both the regional and NUTS3 level. Finally, we applied a principal component analysis (PCA) and varimax rotation to trend outputs -mainly Sen's slope values -to summarize overall temporal behaviour and to explore potential links in the evolution of fire features.Our results suggest that most fire features show remarkable shifts between the late 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. Mann-Kendall outputs revealed negative trends in the Mediterranean region. Results from Sen's slope suggest high spatial and intra-annual variability across the study area. Fire activity related to human sources seems to be experiencing an overall decrease in the northwestern provinces, particularly pronounced during summer. Similarly, the Hinterland and the Mediterranean coast are gradually becoming less fire affected. Finally, PCA enabled trends to be synthesized into four main components: winter fire frequency (PC1), summer burnt area (PC2), large fires (PC3) and natural fires (PC4).

show abstract

“…Understanding the behavior and interaction of forest fires with different ecosystems is important for analyzing spatial and temporal patterns of fire occurrence, as well as for studying changes in ecosystem functions [5,6]. While, historically, fire regimes have been mainly influenced by human activities and practices [7], more recently, climatic and environmental changes are also considered as driving factors affecting fire occurrence and vegetation succession [8,9]. These constantly evolving interactions and effects of fire in space and time constitute what is referred in the literature as fire history [10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Object-Based Approach for Fire History Reconstruction by Using Three Generations of Landsat Sensors

2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:In this study, the capability of geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA) in the reconstruction of the recent fire history of a typical Mediterranean area was investigated. More specifically, a semi-automated GEOBIA procedure was developed and tested on archived and newly acquired Landsat Multispectral Scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM), and Operational Land Imager (OLI) images in order to accurately map burned areas in the Mediterranean island of Thasos. The developed GEOBIA ruleset was built with the use of the TM image and then applied to the other two images. This process of transferring the ruleset did not require substantial adjustments or any replacement of the initially selected features used for the classification, thus, displaying reduced complexity in processing the images. As a result, burned area maps of very high accuracy (over 94% overall) were produced. In addition to the standard error matrix, the employment of additional measures of agreement between the produced maps and the reference data revealed that -spatial misplacement‖ was the main source of classification error. It can be concluded that the proposed approach can be potentially used for reconstructing the recent (40-year) fire history in the Mediterranean, based on extended time series of Landsat or similar data.

show abstract

Fire regime changes and major driving forces in Spain from 1968 to 2010

Cited by 128 publications

References 31 publications

Is Mechanized Harvesting of Shrubs Grown for Energy Purposes Environmentally Sustainable?

Is Mechanized Harvesting of Shrubs Grown for Energy Purposes Environmentally Sustainable?

Exploring spatial–temporal dynamics of fire regime features in mainland Spain

An Object-Based Approach for Fire History Reconstruction by Using Three Generations of Landsat Sensors

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About