Wildfires as a major driver of landscape dynamics in three fire-prone areas of Portugal

Silva, Joaquim; Vaz, Pedro G.; Moreira, Francisco; Catry, Filipe X.; Rego, Francisco

doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2011.03.001

Cited by 90 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Kazanis and Arianoutsou, 2004;Moreira et al, 2011;Pausas et al, 2008), vegetation structure (Keeley, 1986;Lee et al, 2009), or ecosystem function (e.g. Silva et al, 2011). Nevertheless, among the extrinsic factors that can modify the potential of an ecosystem to recover (resilience), burn severity understood as a measure of fire damage on vegetation cover is one of the most important (Bastos et al, 2011;Covington and Sackett, 1992;Neary et al, 1999;Röder et al, 2008;Smithwick et al, 2005).…”

Section: U N C O R R E C T E D P R O O Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

Burn severity influence on post-fire vegetation cover resilience from Landsat MESMA fraction images time series in Mediterranean forest ecosystems

Fernández–Manso

Quintano

Roberts

2016

Remote Sensing of Environment

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Mediterranean ecosystems are adapted to recurrent forest fires by having regeneration mechanisms that overcome the immediate effects of fire. However, the increasing frequency of fires in most European Mediterranean countries is challenging the natural regrowth capability of these ecosystems. In this context, monitoring post-fire vegetation recovery is a priority for forest management and soil erosion control. In this work, a 13-year series (1999-2011) of Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM)/Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM +) data was used to model post-fire vegetation recovery as a function of burn severity and to quantify post-fire resilience as a measure of vegetation cover regrowth. We evaluated a large forest fire located in Spain that burned approximately 30 km 2 of Pinus pinaster Ait. in August 1998. 88 field plots of four burn severity levels (unburned, low, moderate and high) were measured in the field a year after the fire. As a variable representative of vegetation, we chose the shade normalized green vegetation fraction image (SGV) obtained by applying Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis (MESMA) to the original Landsat TM/ETM + images. The SGV values were extracted for the 88 field plots and, after performing a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), a Fisher's Least Significant Difference (LSD) test allowed us to estimate resilience of vegetation cover as the number of post-fire years exhibiting a statistically significant difference between burned and unburned areas. Next, SGV values were referenced to unburned control plots values and the vegetation recovery index (VRI) was defined. The evolution in time curve of VRI for low, moderate and highly fire affected vegetation was fit using trend models (specifically, an exponential trend for VRI in high and moderate burn severity levels; a linear trend for low burn severity level, Root Mean Square Error, RMSE = 0.18, 0.13, and 0.09, respectively). We observed that vegetation cover affected by low severity fire recovered to its original state after 7 years, and vegetation cover affected by moderate severity recovered after 13 years. Vegetation affected by high severity fire was estimated to recover after 20 years. We conclude that VRI time series based on multitemporal MESMA fractions from Landsat data can be considered a valuable indicator of the post-fire vegetation cover recovery. Its temporal evolution represented post-fire vegetation cover regrowth adequately and facilitated the estimate of vegetation cover resilience in Mediterranean forests.

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Section: U N C O R R E C T E D P R O O Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

Burn severity influence on post-fire vegetation cover resilience from Landsat MESMA fraction images time series in Mediterranean forest ecosystems

Fernández–Manso

Quintano

Roberts

2016

Remote Sensing of Environment

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“…The decline of traditional grazing agriculture has increased fuel loads in Portugal [48] and Spain [55] and is associated with land abandonment and shrub encroachment [64] in other Mediterranean countries. However, grazing techniques are also used frequently to reduce fuel loads in natural areas.…”

Section: Land Use Change and Fuel Loadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Land Use and Wildfire: A Review of Local Interactions and Teleconnections

Butsic

Kelly

Moritz

2015

Land

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Abstract:Fire is a naturally occurring process of most terrestrial ecosystems as well as a tool for changing land use. Since the beginning of history humans have used fire as a mechanism for creating areas suitable for agriculture and settlement. As fires threaten human dominated landscapes, fire risk itself has become a driver of landscape change, impacting landscapes through land use regulations and fire management. Land use changes also influence fire ignition frequency and fuel loads and hence alters fire regimes. The impact of these changes is often exacerbated as new land users demand alternative fire management strategies, which can impact land cover and management far from where land use change has actually occurred. This creates nuanced land use teleconnections between source areas for fires and economic cores, which demand and fund fire protection. Here we will review the role of fire and fire risk as a driver of land use change, the ways land use changes impact drivers of fire, and suggest that the integration of land use teleconnections into the fire/land use discussion can help us better understand and manage the complex interactions between fire and land use.

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“…In the Iberian Peninsula, the diffuse urban expansion along radiating access roads connecting the center to commercial/industrial zones and isolated housing, as well as the growth of peri-urban centers in previously rural areas, leaves gaps in the suburban/exurban space (Trigal, 2010). Land use changes are at the origin of landscape patterns and dynamics and have a strong influence on forest fires (Silva et al, 2011). On the one hand, each vegetated land cover type, such as agricultural, natural and semi-natural vegetation cover, has a specific fire proneness depending on the differences in vegetation structure, moisture content and fuel load composition (Barros and Pereira, 2014;Oliveira et al, 2014;Pereira et al, 2014).…”

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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Wildfires as a major driver of landscape dynamics in three fire-prone areas of Portugal

Cited by 90 publications

References 33 publications

Burn severity influence on post-fire vegetation cover resilience from Landsat MESMA fraction images time series in Mediterranean forest ecosystems

Burn severity influence on post-fire vegetation cover resilience from Landsat MESMA fraction images time series in Mediterranean forest ecosystems

Land Use and Wildfire: A Review of Local Interactions and Teleconnections

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

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