Abstract
The wildfires of summer 2021 in Greece were among the most severe forest fire events that have occurred in the country over the past decade. The conflagration period lasted for 20 days (i.e., from 27 July to 16 August 2021) and resulted in the devastation of an area of more than 3600 Km2. Forest fire events of similar severity also struck other Mediterranean countries during this period. Apart from their direct impacts, forest fires also render an area more susceptible to runoff erosion by massively removing its vegetation, among other factors. It is clear that immediately after a forest fire, most areas are much more susceptible to erosion. In this paper, we evaluate the erosion hazard of Attica, Northern Euboea, and the Peloponnese that were devastated by forest fires during the summer of 2021 in Greece, in comparison with their geological and geomorphological structures, as well as land cover and management. Given that a very significant part of these areas were burnt during the major conflagrations of this summer, erosion risk, as well as flood risk, are expected to be very high, especially for the coming autumn and winter. For the evaluation of erosion risk, the burnt areas were mapped, and the final erosion-risk maps were constructed through GIS software. The final maps suggest that most of the burnt areas are highly susceptible to future surface runoff erosion events.
Highlights
The wildfires of summer 2021 in Greece were among the most severe forest fire events that have occurred in the country over the past decade
We examine the vulnerability to surface runoff erosion of several Greek regions that were recently affected by forest fires, and try to identify areas that are more likely to suffer from future erosion events
The broader area of ViliaThe is not characterized by a high risk, for despite thePrefecture medium toishigh slope surface runoff erosion hazard
Summary
The wildfires of summer 2021 in Greece were among the most severe forest fire events that have occurred in the country over the past decade. Surface runoff erosion-risk maps have been developed for certain areas. The most common mapping methods include either mathematical models [5,6,7,8], or in situ observations and bibliographical research [6,7,8,9,10]. Erosion risk is evaluated and determined based on certain criteria posed by researchers. The main drawback is the fact that it is usually non-functional when it comes to areas at a regional scale; many errors might arise which would not be of high significance at a small scale, and the necessary field measurements might be very challenging [6] or very rough [8]. Among the most important advances in field measurements and observations are the LiDAR [14,15,16,17,18]
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