Contribution of human and biophysical factors to the spatial distribution of forest fire ignitions and large wildfires in a French Mediterranean region

Identifying the factors that drive the spatial distribution of fires is one of the most challenging issues facing fire science in a changing world. We investigated the relative influence of humans, land cover and weather on the regional distribution of fires in a Mediterranean region using boosted r...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal of wildland fire Vol. 26; no. 6; pp. 498 - 508
Main Authors Ruffault, Julien, Mouillot, Florent
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Roslyn CSIRO 2017
CSIRO Publishing
Subjects
Biodiversity and Ecology
Climate change
Drought
Environmental Sciences
fire hazard
Fire hazards
fire weather
Forest & brush fires
Forest fires
fuels (fire ecology)
humans
Influence
Land cover
Mediterranean region
Regions
Regression analysis
Spatial distribution
Topography
Variables
Vegetation
Weather
Wildfires
Mediterranean region
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ISSN1049-8001
1448-5516
DOI10.1071/WF16181

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Summary:Identifying the factors that drive the spatial distribution of fires is one of the most challenging issues facing fire science in a changing world. We investigated the relative influence of humans, land cover and weather on the regional distribution of fires in a Mediterranean region using boosted regression trees and a set of seven explanatory variables. The spatial pattern of fire weather, which is seldom accounted for in regional models, was estimated using a semi-mechanistic approach and expressed as the length of the fire weather season. We found that the drivers of the spatial distribution of fires followed a fire size-dependent pattern in which human activities and settlements mainly determined the distribution of all fires whereas the continuity and type of fuels mainly controlled the location of the largest fires. The spatial structure of fire weather was estimated to be responsible for an average of 25% of the spatial patterns of fires, suggesting that climate change may directly affect the spatial patterns of fire hazard in the near future. These results enhance our understanding of long-term controls of the spatial distribution of wildfires and predictive maps of fire hazard provide useful information for fire management actions.
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ISSN:1049-8001
1448-5516
DOI:10.1071/WF16181