Land Cover Change and Fire Regime in the European Mediterranean Region

Abstract

This chapter presents an analysis of land cover and land cover changes in Southern Europe and its relation to fire regimes. The influence of land cover and land cover changes in fire hazard is presented in the first section. This is followed by a detailed analysis of fire regimes in the study region. Two main parameters, number of wildfires and burned area, are used to study the temporal and spatial variability of forest fires in southern Europe during the last decades. This sets the scene to an in depth analysis of changes in land cover in the areas affected by forest fires. Since the European Mediterranean region is influenced by intense demography and pressure on wildland areas, this section analyzes which areas are most affected by fires, and which are the land cover transitions they lead to. The chapter ends with a comparative analysis of differences in land cover dynamics in fire-affected areas in comparison to the surrounding non-burned areas.