Author(s):  Modugno, S.;  Balzter, H.;  Cole, B.;  Borrelli, P.;

Subjects:  Risk assessment and mapping.

Publication year: 2016

Published by: ELSEVIER / ELSEVIER

Abstract:

Over recent decades, Land Use and Cover Change (LUCC) trends in many regions of Europe have
reconfigured the landscape structures around many urban areas. In these areas, the proximity to landscape
elements with high forest fuels has increased the fire risk to people and property. These Wildland
eUrban Interface areas (WUI) can be defined as landscapes where anthropogenic urban land use and
forest fuel mass come into contact. Mapping their extent is needed to prioritize fire risk control and
inform local forest fire risk management strategies. This study proposes a method to map the extent and
spatial patterns of the European WUI areas at continental scale. Using the European map of WUI areas,
the hypothesis is tested that the distance from the nearest WUI area is related to the forest fire probability.
Statistical relationships between the distance from the nearest WUI area, and large forest fire
incidents from satellite remote sensing were subsequently modelled by logistic regression analysis. The
first European scale map of the WUI extent and locations is presented. Country-specific positive and
negative relationships of large fires and the proximity to the nearest WUI area are found. A regional-scale
analysis shows a strong influence of the WUI zones on large fires in parts of the Mediterranean regions.
Results indicate that the probability of large burned surfaces increases with diminishing WUI distance in
touristic regions like Sardinia, Provence-Alpes-C^ote d'Azur, or in regions with a strong peri-urban
component as Catalunya, Comunidad de Madrid, Comunidad Valenciana. For the above regions, probability
curves of large burned surfaces show statistical relationships (ROC value > 0.5) inside a 5000 m
buffer of the nearest WUI. Wise land management can provide a valuable ecosystem service of fire risk
reduction that is currently not explicitly included in ecosystem service valuations. The results reemphasise
the importance of including this ecosystem service in landscape valuations to account for
the significant landscape function of reducing the risk of catastrophic large fires.

Remarks:

Journal of Environmental Management 172 (2016) 112-126
© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords: Land use/land cover change, Spatial analysis, Forest fire risk, WildlandeUrban Interface, Logistic regression, CORINE

Language: English

Document copyright: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported

Document availability: -

Document type: Journals

Document format: PDF Document

Document file: -

Document url: URL

Contact email: sirio.modugno@gmail.com

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