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Abstract
Canada is expected to see an increase in fire risk under future climate projections. Large fires, such as that near Fort McMurray, Alberta in 2016, can be devastating to the communities affected. Understanding the role of human emissions in the occurrence of such extreme fire events can lend insight into how these events might change in the future. An event attribution framework is used to quantify the influence of anthropogenic forcings on extreme fire risk in the current climate of a ...
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Vol. 32 (December 2018)
by Israr Albar, Lucy Amissah, David Bowman, Val Charlton, Mark Cochrane, Bill De Groot, David Ellison, Robert Field, Mike Flannigan, Johann Goldammer, Promode Kant, Muhammad N. Khan, Werner L. Kornexl, Andrey Krasovskii, Sarah McCaffrey, Andrew M. Mitchell, A. K. Mohanty, Peter Moore, Daniel Murdiyarso, Alfredo Nolasco-Morales, Ainuddin Nuruddin, Stavros Papageorgiou, Natasha Ribeiro, François-Nicolas Robinne, Patricio Sanhueza, Jesús San-Miguel-Ayanz, Dmitry Schepaschenko, Alberto Setzer, Ross Smith, Britaldo Soares-Filho, William Sommers, John Stanturf, Lara Steil, Guido Van der Werf, Cristina Vega-Garcia, E. Vikram
Abstract
[Executive summary] Today, catastrophic wildfires are increasingly common across the globe. Recent disasters have attracted media attention and strengthened the perception of wildfires as “bad” events, a plague worsened by climate change that has yet to be eradicated. Although it is true that fire has a destructive potential, the reality of global fire activity depicts a much more complex picture in which fire can be a useful, if not necessary, tool for food security and the preservation of cultural landscapes, as well ...
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Abstract
[Highlights] [::] Application of non-linear methods for wildfire susceptibility mapping is carried out. [::] Performances of stochastic and deterministic approaches are compared. [::] The case study is performed on a highly fire-prone region of Portugal. [Abstract] Wildfire susceptibility is a measure of land propensity for the occurrence of wildfires based on terrain's intrinsic characteristics. In the present study, two stochastic approaches (i.e., extreme learning machine and random forest) for wildfire susceptibility mapping are compared versus a well established deterministic method. The same predisposing variables were combined ...
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(February 2018)
Abstract
[Executive summary] Portugal has one of the highest forest fire risk rankings in Europe. Fire researchers all point to the same combination of contributing factors: shifting demographics with population moving from rural to urban areas, changes in land use with more agricultural and forested areas left unattended and not being maintained, and fragmentation of land ownership patterns that discourage investment in forest management and fire planning. The trend of annual burned area for the last four decades confirms a new level in fire activity in Portugal, despite ...
References
- Almeida, J., Relvas, P., Silva, L., Catry, F., Rego, F., Santos, T. 2007. Portuguese lookout towers network optimization using automatic positioning algorithms. In: Proceedings of the 4th International Wildland Fire Conference, 13-17 May, Seville, Spain. https://www.fire.uni-freiburg.de/sevilla-2007/contributions/doc/cd/SESIONES_TEMATICAS/ST4/Almeida_et_al_PORTUGAL.pdf .
- Beighley, M., Hyde, A. C., 2009. Systemic risk and Portugal's forest fire defense strategy - An assessment of wildfire management and response capability.
- Beighley, M., Quesinberry, M., 2004. USA-Portugal wildland fire technical
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Abstract
[Highlights] [::] Land use planning in SE France led to increased housing density in 1990-2012 and maintained WUI wildfire risk constant. [::] The number of buildings increased by 30% but WUI area increased by less than 5% as housing density increased. [::] Fire frequency and burned area increase substantially as Fire Weather Index surpasses a threshold value of 90. [Abstract] Wildfires burn > 450,000 ha of forest every year in Euro-Mediterranean countries. Many fires originate in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) where housing density and weather ...
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