ENVIRONMENTAL AND HUMAN FACTORS INFLUENCING FIRE TRENDS IN ENSO AND NON-ENSO YEARS IN TROPICAL MEXICO

Abstract

Tropical and subtropical areas present the vast majority of contemporary global fires. Despite the human origin of most of these fires, little is known of how environmental and socioeconomic variables contribute to the spatial patterns of fire incidence and burned areas. The tropical Mexican State of Chiapas represents a good case study to analyze these interactions, due to the availability of official data, and its similarities to other tropical countries, in terms of environmental and socioeconomic characteristics. This study evaluates the relative importance of human-related and environmental variables in determining the distribution of the number of fires and area burned in the tropical State of Chiapas in years of normal and extreme climatic conditions (non-El Nino vs. El Nino). We have searched for causal relationships among fire, environmental, and socioeconomic variables in Chiapas using path analysis. Results of this study show a major importance of environmental variables in non-El Nino years, s...