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Adaptation of the Canadian Fire Weather Index to Mediterranean forests

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Abstract

The Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) is one of the most used tools to forecast forest fire hazard. In this paper, we propose an adaptation of the FWI to take into account the Mediterranean vegetation and climate, to improve FWI performances for areas with these characteristics. In particular, the FWI has been calibrated for two Mediterranean regions (Algarve, Portugal and Peloponnese, Greece) by fitting the experimental data, collected in the field, for the forest fuel moisture content, with the values expected by the application of the original Canadian FWI. Field data were collected during the 2010 and 2011 fire seasons. The satisfactory results obtained by the adaptation of parameters from the original FWI, in spite of the small sample areas and limited time of collection, allowed us to verify the usefulness of the method in describing the fuel moisture dynamics and obtaining indexes closer to the characteristics of the Mediterranean forests considered. The adapted FWI, if further tested and extended to other sample areas, may help in a more detailed and precise application of the FWI index by improving the daily forest fire hazard forecast, to become also a better support for the Civil Protection Agency of Mediterranean countries.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the project PROTECT “An Integrated European Model to Protect Mediterranean Forests from Fire,” financing from MED Program, EU, (1G-MED08-387/PROTECT)—www.protect-med.eu) and the data samplers for the Region of Algarve and the Region of Peloponnese and the Canadian Forestry Service for providing relevant publications.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biosciences and Medicine Veterinary/School of Science and Technology, University of Camerino, Via Pontoni, 5, 62032, Camerino, MC, Italy

    Stefano Chelli, Pierluigi Maponi, Giandiego Campetella, Paolo Monteverde, Monica Foglia & Eleonora Paris

  2. Region of Peloponnese, 5 Lykourgou Str., 22100, Tripoli, Greece

    Andreas Lolis

  3. Research Centre for Spatial and Organizational Dynamics, University of Algarve, 8000, Faro, Portugal

    Thomas Panagopoulos

Authors
  1. Stefano Chelli
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  2. Pierluigi Maponi
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  3. Giandiego Campetella
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  4. Paolo Monteverde
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  5. Monica Foglia
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  6. Eleonora Paris
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  7. Andreas Lolis
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  8. Thomas Panagopoulos
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Correspondence to Thomas Panagopoulos.

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Chelli, S., Maponi, P., Campetella, G. et al. Adaptation of the Canadian Fire Weather Index to Mediterranean forests. Nat Hazards 75, 1795–1810 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-014-1397-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-014-1397-8

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