ESR4 Project

Recently established environmental conditions, both natural- and human-induced, have reshaped southern European landscapes leading to magnified natural risks, including wildfires. As a result, extreme wildfire events are a growing reality. Some authors define extreme wildfires in terms of their size, their impacts, or their suppression difficulty. However, there is no single definition appropriate for this type of wildland fires because it is totally dependent on its socio-ecological context. Through this project we want to better understand and define the drivers that characterise these extreme wildfires in Southern Europe. A database containing the wildfires that could be considered extreme in Southern Europe is being built to answer our research questions. Fire data were obtained from remote sensing (e.g., fire radiative power, FRP) and ground observation (e.g., fire-spread rate), from three main sources: the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS); the Global Fire Atlas Database; and the BONFIRE worldwide database of fire behaviour characteristics. Relationships between fire weather indices —the Canadian Fire Weather Index and the Hot Dry Windy Index— and wildfire metrics are being established to determine thresholds for extreme fire behaviour and to improve fire danger rating for future fire management applications. Finally, spatially-explicit fire growth simulation of past extreme wildfire events is carried out with the Wildfire Analyst® software for different fuel scenarios. The objective is to examine the potential role of mitigation through fuel management to decrease wildfire spread and reduce their negative impacts.

KEYWORDS: Fire Danger Rating, Fire Weather Indices, Extreme Wildfire Behaviour, Fuel Management

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