Assessing Post-Fire Effects on Soil Loss Combining Burn Severity and Advanced Erosion Modeling in Malesina, Central Greece

Abstract

Earth’s ecosystems are extremely valuable to humanity, playing a key role ecologically, economically, and socially. Wildfires constitute a significant threat to the environment, especially in vulnerable ecosystems, such as those that are commonly found in the Mediterranean. Due to their strong impact on the environment, they provide a crucial factor in managing ecosystems behavior, causing dramatic modifications to land surface processes dynamics leading to land degradation. The soil erosion phenomenon downgrades soil quality in ecosystems and reduces land productivity. Thus, it is imperative to implement advanced erosion prediction models to assess fire effects on soil characteristics. This study focuses on examining the wildfire case that burned 30 km2 in Malesina of Central Greece in 2014. The added value of remote sensing today, such as the high accuracy of satellite data, has contributed to visualizing the burned area concerning the severity of the event. Additional data from local weather stations were used to quantify soil loss on a seasonal basis using RUSLE modeling before and after the wildfire. Results of this study revealed that there is a remarkable variety of high soil loss values, especially in winter periods. More particularly, there was a 30% soil loss rise one year after the wildfire, while five years after the event, an almost double reduction was observed. In specific areas with high soil erosion values, infrastructure works were carried out validating the applied methodology. The approach adopted in this study underlines the significance of using remote sensing and geoinformation techniques to assess the post-fire effects of identifying vulnerable areas based on soil erosion parameters on a local scale.