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Wildfires at a Pan-Mediterranean Scale: Human-Environment Dynamics Through MODIS Data

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Abstract

Wildfires are extremely complex phenomena resulting from a wide variety of causes. They are commonly characterized through a hierarchy of physical frames and contributing factors (biomass accumulation, climatic conditions, ignition parameters, development patterns), but the human dimension is often relegated to the background. Furthermore, most technical approaches address the wildfire “problem” on both a local and global scale but ignore the intermediate regional level, which is the most appropriate for analysing terrains and conditions that favour the development of fires. In contrast, I focus here on the Mediterranean Basin as a whole, an area considered particularly “vulnerable.” Studying wildfires across such an extended area entails a patchwork of geosystems that are subjected to different human pressures in the form of varying development patterns. I examined forest and other forms of wildfires that occurred in the region from 2001 to 2013 through combined MODIS derived data (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, Burned Areas and Land Cover Types). This approach, in addressing the critical need for mapping the entire area, produced new and more comprehensive insights into the basin than conventional segmented views. Statistical, time-series and hotspot analyses demonstrate that the importance of agricultural or pastoral use of prescribed fires is largely underrated. While public attention is mainly focused on “megafires,” the impacts of armed conflicts and political-economic turmoil are clearly evidenced, highlighting the complexity of human-based geosystems.

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Notes

  1. These include large blazes in the Peloponnese and Attica, Greece, in 2007 and 2009 (Petropoulos et al. 2010; Koutsias et al. 2012), in mainland Portugal in 2003 and 2005 (Gomes 2006; Oliveras and Piñol 2006; Lourenço 2008), and other smaller events impacting highly urbanized areas or valuable natural parks, e.g., Mount Carmel-Haifa, 2010, and Calanques of Marseille, 2009 (Paz et al. 2011; Ganteaume and Jappiot 2013).

  2. Nevertheless, across the Mediterranean regime disturbances do not attain the levels seen in other parts of the world, such as Russia, the United States and Australia, which have experienced repeated large-scale wildfires (Attiwill and Binkley 2011; Goldammer 2011; Moriondo et al. 2006).

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the UMR 5281 ART-Dev -Joint Research Unit of Montpellier “Actors, resources, and territories in development”. The author wants to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on previous versions of this manuscript.

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  1. CNRS UMR 5281 ART-Dev, Université Paul Valéry, Site Saint-Charles, Route de Mende, FR-34090, Montpellier, France

    Régis Darques

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Darques, R. Wildfires at a Pan-Mediterranean Scale: Human-Environment Dynamics Through MODIS Data. Hum Ecol 44, 47–63 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-015-9802-9

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