Spatial and Temporal Wildfire Decomposition as a Tool for Assessment and Planning of an Efficient Forest Policy in Galicia (Spain)

Jesús Barreal,Gil Jannes

doi:10.3390/f11080811

Abstract

Wildfires in Galicia have various temporal and spatial trends. This temporal and spatial behavior must therefore be studied and taken into account in order to design more efficient forest policies. Since both factors are inhomogeneous, it was proposed to study them using a Gini index decomposition. The number of fires and the affected forest area were studied in terms of the months and the forest districts, which serve as basic temporal and spatial elements. The objective of this methodology is to know the months in which the fires are most concentrated throughout the administrative geographical districts of the various provinces of Galicia, and the elasticity of each month with respect to the global concentration. It is also used to know the temporal inequality in each forest district of Galicia and its contribution to the global index. To apply this methodology, monthly data are taken from 2006 to 2015 for each of the Galician forest districts. It is found that there is a high spatial concentration of fires in the autumn and winter months, and a much lower one in the remaining months. On the other hand, most districts register a great temporal inequality in the occurrence of fires. Tentative suggestions of how the forest policy in Galicia could be improved by taking into account both these spatial and temporal patterns are discussed.

Highlights

Wildfires have a high impact on the natural environment, which affects both the ecosystem itself and the residents’ quality of life [1,2,3,4,5]
This leads to the need to design public policies aimed at reducing both the number of fires and the area affected, and thereby minimizing the impact on the population in terms of health and safety, and economically, both in the short term and in the long run [6]
The Gini decomposition for each of the study variables based on the spatial concentration of wildfires per month will be presented

Summary

Introduction

Wildfires have a high impact on the natural environment, which affects both the ecosystem itself and the residents’ quality of life [1,2,3,4,5] This leads to the need to design public policies aimed at reducing both the number of fires and the area affected, and thereby minimizing the impact on the population in terms of health and safety, and economically, both in the short term (destruction of valuable timber) and in the long run (for example, due to soil erosion and air pollution, which reduces the agricultural and eco-touristic potential) [6]. These focus on an efficient firefighting response, on measures to recover the natural environment, and on legal and economic liability imposition for the damage caused by the fire [12]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion