RT Journal Article
T1 Drivers and trends in the size and severity of forest fires endangering WUI areas: a regional case study
A1 Rodriguez Jimenez, Fernando
A1 Fernandes, Paulo M.
A1 Fernández Guisuraga, José Manuel
A1 Álvarez Bermúdez, Xana
A1 Lorenzo Cimadevila, Henrique Remixio
K1 2509 Meteorología
AB This study explored, for the first time, the drivers shaping large fire size and high severity of forest fires classified as level-2 in Spain, which pose a great danger to the wildland–urban interface. Specifically, we examined how bottom-up (fuel type and topography) and top-down (fire weather) controls shaped level-2 fire behavior through a Random Forest classifier at the regional scale in Galicia (NW Spain). We selected for this purpose 93 level-2 forest fires. The accuracy of the RF fire size and severity classifications was remarkably high (>80%). Fire weather overwhelmed bottom-up controls in controlling the fire size of level-2 forest fires. The likelihood of large level-2 forest fires increased sharply with the fire weather index, but plateaued at values above 40. Fire size strongly responded to minimum relative humidity at values below 30%. The most important variables explaining fire severity in level-2 forest fires were the same as in the fire size, as well as the pre-fire shrubland fraction. The high-fire-severity likelihood of level-2 forest fires increased exponentially for shrubland fractions in the landscape above 50%. Our results suggest that level-2 forest fires will pose an increasing danger to people and their property under predicted scenarios of extreme weather conditions.
PB Forests
SN 19994907
YR 2023
FD 2023-12-02
LK http://hdl.handle.net/11093/6488
UL http://hdl.handle.net/11093/6488
LA eng
NO Forests, 14(12): 2366 (2023)
NO Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia | Ref. UIDB/04033/2020
DS Investigo
RD 18-sep-2024