Assessing Wildfire Risk in Cultural Heritage Properties Using High Spatial and Temporal Resolution Satellite Imagery and Spatially Explicit Fire Simulations: The Case of Holy Mount Athos, Greece

Giorgos Mallinis,Esteban Beltran,Ioannis Mitsopoulos,Johann Goldammer

doi:10.3390/f7020046

Abstract

Fire management implications and the design of conservation strategies on fire prone landscapes within the UNESCO World Heritage Properties require the application of wildfire risk assessment at landscape level. The objective of this study was to analyze the spatial variation of wildfire risk on Holy Mount Athos in Greece. Mt. Athos includes 20 monasteries and other structures that are threatened by increasing frequency of wildfires. Site-specific fuel models were created by measuring in the field several fuel parameters in representative natural fuel complexes, while the spatial extent of the fuel types was determined using a synergy of high-resolution imagery and high temporal information from medium spatial resolution imagery classified through object-based analysis and a machine learning classifier. The Minimum Travel Time (MTT) algorithm, as it is embedded in FlamMap software, was applied in order to evaluate Burn Probability (BP), Conditional Flame Length (CFL), Fire Size (FS), and Source-Sink Ratio (SSR). The results revealed low burn probabilities for the monasteries; however, nine out of the 20 monasteries have high fire potential in terms of fire intensity, which means that if an ignition occurs, an intense fire is expected. The outputs of this study may be used for decision-making for short-term predictions of wildfire risk at an operational level, contributing to fire suppression and management of UNESCO World Heritage Properties.

Highlights

Cultural heritage is a very important component of human history and identity but is increasingly threatened by various natural hazards associated with climate change such as extreme weather events and related hazards, e.g., wildfires, floods, and windstorms
The dense shrublands fuel model incorporates maquis with heights up to 2.0 m, a high proportion of foliage load, and a substantial part of the fuel load distributed to the large size class, while the sparse shrublands fuel model is characterized by low height and ground cover shrubs
The understory of Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis Mill.) forests is mainly composed of shrubs that present reduced fuel load values and height compared to the dense shrublands fuel model and increased values compared to sparse shrublands fuel model

Summary

Introduction

Cultural heritage is a very important component of human history and identity but is increasingly threatened by various natural hazards associated with climate change such as extreme weather events and related hazards, e.g., wildfires, floods, and windstorms. Wildfires constitute a severe threat to cultural heritage sites. Extreme weather events and their associated hazards in the Mediterranean basin are predicted to become more frequent and damaging under all proposed scenarios of climate change [1]. Wildfires may become even more disastrous for many cultural heritage sites that are already threatened, and may threaten other sites that historically—before the onset of climate change—were less prone to fire [2,3,4]. Reports of damages caused by wildfires on historical sites are becoming more frequent and alarming.

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