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Temporal trends in the area burnt by high severity fire presented as total area (upper panel) and percentage of burnt area (lower panel). Dots represent each of the 162 wildfires examined in this study.
Source publication
Wildfires worldwide are becoming more frequent but are they also becoming more severe? Here we used remotely sensed burn-severity data from wildfires in Victoria, southeastern Australia to address that question. We selected 162 wildfires of more than 1000 ha that occurred over the past 30 years across a wide range of forest types. Spectral indices...
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Context 1
... their size (Fig. 3). In contrast to the trend in the overall fire size, our analysis of the high-severity fire mapping indicates that within those fires greater than 1000 ha both the area burnt by high-severity fire and the proportion that high-severity area represents have increased significantly (p<0.05 and p<0.1 respectively) from 1987 to 2017 (Fig. 4). The increase in high-severity fires in south-eastern Australia is of great concern. The impacts of high severity fires in temperate Eucalyptus forest include soil erosion, reduction in carbon sequestration and carbon carrying capacity, destruction of habitat, and loss of social and aesthetical values [17][18][19][20]. The magnitude of ...
Context 2
... their size (Fig. 3). In contrast to the trend in the overall fire size, our analysis of the high-severity fire mapping indicates that within those fires greater than 1000 ha both the area burnt by high-severity fire and the proportion that high-severity area represents have increased significantly (p<0.05 and p<0.1 respectively) from 1987 to 2017 (Fig. 4). The increase in high-severity fires in south-eastern Australia is of great concern. The impacts of high severity fires in temperate Eucalyptus forest include soil erosion, reduction in carbon sequestration and carbon carrying capacity, destruction of habitat, and loss of social and aesthetical values [17][18][19][20]. The magnitude of ...
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Citations
... Over the last decades, an increasing trend in larger and more severe wildfires has been generally observed over many fire-prone regions, namely in the Mediterranean basin [1][2][3], California [4][5][6], and Australia [7,8]. More frequent hot and dry summer conditions, combined with climate change and high fuel accumulation over time and space, have already been shown to promote large and intense fire seasons across these regions [9][10][11]. ...
Mediterranean European countries, including Portugal, are considered fire-prone regions, being affected by fire events every summer. Nonetheless, Portugal has been recording large burned areas over the last 20 years, which are not only strongly associated with hot and dry conditions, but also with high fuel availability in the ecosystems. Due to recent catastrophic fire seasons, Portugal has been implementing preventive policies during the pre-fire season, which, in turn, can optimize combat strategies during the fire season. In this context, our study contributes to fire prevention by identifying the regions with the highest potential to burn. The application of a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to a range of climatological, ecological, and biophysical variables, either provided by remote sensing or reanalysis products, and known to be linked with diverse fire-vulnerability factors, allows the objective identification of the regions with the highest susceptibility to burn. The central and southernmost areas of Portugal present a stronger signal in the PCA, suggesting a likely high exposure to future fire events. The fuel accumulation over several months, in conjunction with elevation and fire weather conditions, are the terms out of the retained PCs that can explain most of the variability. The quality assessment performed for the burned areas in 2022 showed that they occurred in highly susceptible areas, highlighting the usefulness of the proposed methodology.
