Fire activity and burned forest lands decreased during the last three decades in Spain
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RESEARCH PAPER
Fire activity and burned forest lands decreased during the last three decades in Spain Itziar R. Urbieta 1
&
Magí Franquesa 1,2 & Olga Viedma 1 & José M. Moreno 1
Received: 26 May 2019 / Accepted: 7 August 2019 # INRA and Springer-Verlag France SAS, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract & Key message Fire activity has decreased in the last decades in Spain as a whole and in most provinces. However, fire risk factors have increased. Wildfires are burning preferentially treeless areas. Flammable pine areas burn less, while the less flammable oak forests burn more. This decreasing fire activity coincides with increasing fire suppression resources. & Context Climate and other fire risk factors are changing across the world, including the Mediterranean region. It is important to determine how fire activity is responding to such changes. & Aims To identify spatio-temporal changes in fire frequency and size, main tree species burned, and their association with changes in climate, land-use and land-cover, and fire suppression. & Methods Analysis of trends, breakpoints, and association among the time series of fire variables and fire risk factors during 1980–2013 in Spain at country and provincial levels. & Results Wildfires in Spain have been decreasing in number, burned area, mean, and largest fire sizes. Fires are more frequently burning treeless areas than forests. Pine forests are burning less, while oak forests are burning more. Fire suppression resources, particularly aerial ones, increased significantly. Risk factors like the mean summer fire weather index, and the forested and the artificial areas all increased. & Conclusion Despite increasing fire risk factors, wildfires have decreased at the country as a whole and in most provinces in Spain during the last 34 years. Keywords Climate change . Fire risk . Fire suppression . Fire weather . Land-use and land-cover change
Handling Editor: Paulo Fernandes Contributions of the co-authors Conceptualization: JMM, IRU, and OV; Methodology: IRU, MF, OV, and JMM; Formal analysis: IRU, MF, and OV; Investigation: IRU, MF, OV, and JMM; Writing—original draft: IRU and JMM; Writing, review, and editing: IRU, MF, OV, and JMM; Project Administration: JMM; Funding acquisition: JMM. All authors reviewed and agreed on the final manuscript. * Itziar R. Urbieta [email protected] * José M. Moreno [email protected] Magí Franquesa [email protected] Olga Viedma [email protected]
1
Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Avenida de Carlos III s/n, E-45071 Toledo, Spain
2
Present address: Department of Geology, Geography, and Environmental Sciences, University of Alcalá, Colegios 2, 28801 Alcalá de Henares, Spain
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1 Introduction Climate and weather exert major controls on wildfire occurrence, but human factors have influenced fire regimes in different ecosystems across the world (Pausas and Keeley 2009; Bowman et al. 2017). Seasonal fire patterns have been altered due to human pressure (e.g., Benali
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