Half-Century Changes in LULC and Fire in Two Iberian Inner Mountain Areas

Catarina Romão Sequeira,Cristina Montiel-Molina,Francisco Rego,Penelope Morgan

doi:10.3390/fire2030045

Catarina Romão Sequeira, Cristina Montiel-Molina + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/fire2030045

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Abstract

Wildfires in the Iberian Peninsula were large and frequent in the second half of the 20th century. Land use and land cover (LULC) also changed greatly. Our aim was to understand the relationship between LULC and fire in the western and eastern ends of the Iberian Central Mountain System. We compared two case study landscapes, the Estrela massif and the Ayllón massif, which are biophysically similar but with different social-ecological contexts. In both, fires were in general more likely in shrublands and pastures than in forests. Shrublands replaced forests after fires. Contrasting LULC in the two massifs, particularly pastures, likely explained the differences in fire occurrence, and reflected different regional land use policies and history. Fire here is a social-ecological system, influenced by specific LULC and with implications from landscape to regional scales. Understanding how LULC changes interact with fire is powerful for improving landscape and regional planning.

Highlights

Land use and land cover (LULC) in the Iberian Peninsula have undergone substantial changes through the second half of the 20th century, mostly related to human activities resulting from economic development [1]
The Central Mountain System of the Iberian Peninsula is a good example of the regional, national and global social-ecological dynamics that happened in the second half of the 20th century [5,6,7,8,9]
We found that (1) fire likely affected LULC transitions and that (2) LULC influenced fire selectivity as different LULC categories had different fire proneness in both the Estrela and Ayllón massifs

Summary

Introduction

Land use and land cover (LULC) in the Iberian Peninsula have undergone substantial changes through the second half of the 20th century, mostly related to human activities resulting from economic development [1]. The Central Mountain System of the Iberian Peninsula is a good example of the regional, national and global social-ecological dynamics that happened in the second half of the 20th century [5,6,7,8,9]. This area is historically very fire prone [10,11], and the interactions between LULC and fire have been studied at the regional and landscape scales (e.g., [10,12,13,14]). They belong to the same mountain system and are biophysically similar, they are in two different countries

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