Sparks Aaron M, Manoudakis Stylianos, Konstantinos Antoniadis, Sismanis Michail, Boschetti Luigi, Gitas Ioannis Z, Kalaitzidis Chariton
Department of Forest, Rangeland, and Fire Sciences, College of Natural Resources, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844, USA.
School of Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Crete 73100, Greece.
Sci Total Environ. 2024 Dec 20;957:177723. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.177723. Epub 2024 Nov 27.
A growing concern in the Mediterranean region is that recent landcover and land use change is increasing wildfire risk, or the exposure and impacts of wildfire to valued resources. However, the magnitude of these effects is not well understood given the widely diverse landscapes of communities, natural vegetation, and agricultural land. In this study, we use wildfire simulation modeling to assess how landcover and land use changes in three areas of southern Greece have affected exposure of- and fire risk to- communities and economically important permanent agriculture such as Olea europaea (European olive) orchards. We mapped agricultural and wildland fuel change from 2000 to 2020 and simulated fuel scenarios in agricultural land to assess the impacts of agricultural land practices, such as understory clearing, on fire risk. We show that wildfire exposure and risk to communities and permanent agriculture has increased in some areas due to natural fuel densification and decreased in other areas, mainly due to agricultural land expansion. These results highlight that wildfire exposure and risk are driven by local conditions including density and location of communities, spatial arrangement of natural fuels and agricultural land, and agricultural land use practices. Human settlement burn probability and modeled permanent crop loss increased with greater unmaintained agricultural area in all study areas, emphasizing the importance of agricultural land maintenance practices, such as understory clearing, to reduce fuel continuity and fire intensity. Ultimately, quantitative fire risk analyses such as this study provide a useful framework to identify areas of concern where either fuel mitigation or landowner incentives to maintain agricultural land in a less-burnable condition could be applied.
地中海地区日益受到关注的一个问题是，近期的土地覆盖和土地利用变化正在增加野火风险，或者说增加了野火对珍贵资源的暴露程度和影响。然而，鉴于社区、自然植被和农业用地的景观千差万别，这些影响的程度尚未得到充分了解。在本研究中，我们使用野火模拟模型来评估希腊南部三个地区的土地覆盖和土地利用变化如何影响社区以及诸如油橄榄（欧洲橄榄）果园等具有经济重要性的永久性农业面临的暴露程度和火灾风险。我们绘制了2000年至2020年农业和荒地燃料变化情况，并模拟了农业用地中的燃料情景，以评估诸如清除林下植被等农业用地做法对火灾风险的影响。我们发现，由于自然燃料密度增加，一些地区社区和永久性农业面临的野火暴露程度和风险有所上升，而在其他地区则有所下降，主要原因是农业用地扩张。这些结果表明，野火暴露程度和风险是由当地条件驱动的，包括社区的密度和位置、自然燃料和农业用地的空间布局以及农业用地使用做法。在所有研究区域，随着未维护农业面积的增加，人类住区的燃烧概率和模拟的永久性作物损失也增加，这凸显了诸如清除林下植被等农业用地维护做法对于减少燃料连续性和火灾强度的重要性。最终，像本研究这样的定量火灾风险分析提供了一个有用的框架，以确定那些可以采取燃料缓解措施或激励土地所有者将农业用地维持在不易燃烧状态的关注区域。
