7th Workshop on Forest Fire Management - EARSeL, European ...

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I - PRE-FIRE PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT
In Spain, we have found statistically significant relationships between the
decrease of negligent fires and urbanization as main land cover change.
When urbanization is the main change, then the decrease in negligence
fires has been the 60%. In Portugal, none of the land cover changes had a
statistically significant relationship with the changes in fire trends.
4 - Discussion and conclusions
We have found significant relationships between land cover changes and
the occurrence of wildland fires due to negligence in France and Spain. The
increase of urbanization was associated with a decrease of negligence fires
in both countries. In France, the relationship was statistically significant
where the main land cover change between the two study periods was from
agricultural areas to urban, whereas in Spain was the increase in urban land
cover to detriment to the other land covers. The socioeconomic changes in
the last decades in the European countries have lead to the abandonment
of rural activities and the increase of urban areas. This phenomenon has
several effects: forest management is disappearing because of the abandonment
of the rural activities, driving to an accumulation of fuel in the
forests. This accumulation favors the probability of fire ignition. We have
found that the gaining in urbanization is related to the decrease in fire due
to negligence actions. This effect might be explained because if there are
less forest areas the probability of a fire may decrease. In both countries
we have not found significant relationships with the land cover changes
and the fires due to deliberate actions. In Portugal, we have not found significant
relationships with the fire occurrence trends. These results show
some preliminary findings of the analysis of the relation between humancaused
fire trends and land cover changes in three South-Western European
countries. Because of the difference between countries, it would be needed
a more detailed analysis of the fire cause types as the exact meaning of
the 4 broad fire cause categories may differ from country to country.
Besides, a more detailed spatial scale such as e.g. NUTS5 level, would
improve the analysis, because the trends and changes could be better
depicted. Also, other data sources of land cover change should be tested.
References
Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 2007. Fire
Management Global Assessment. A thematic study prepared in the
framework of the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005. FAO Forestry
Paper 151. Rome, Italy. 320 pp. Available at: http://www. fao.org/
forestry/ fra2005/en/ (last accessed May 25, 2009).
Garson, D., 2006. Statnotes: Fisher Exact Test of Significance. Available at:
http://faculty.chass.ncsu.edu/garson/PA765/fisher.htm (last accessed