title: Landscape--wildfire interactions in southern Europe: implications for landscape management.
abstract: Every year approximately half a million hectares of land are burned by wildfires in southern Europe, causing large ecological and socio-economic impacts. Climate and land use changes in the last decades have increased fire risk and danger. In this paper we review the available scientific knowledge on the relationships between landscape and wildfires in the Mediterranean region, with a focus on its application for defining landscape management guidelines and policies that could be adopted in order to promote landscapes with lower fire hazard. The main findings are that (1) socio-economic drivers have favoured land cover changes contributing to increasing fire hazard in the last decades, (2) large wildfires are becoming more frequent, (3) increased fire frequency is promoting homogeneous landscapes covered by fire-prone shrublands; (4) landscape planning to reduce fuel loads may be successful only if fire weather conditions are not extreme. The challenges to address these problems and the policy and landscape management responses that should be adopted are discussed, along with major knowledge gaps.
authors: Centro de Ecologia Aplicada Prof. Baeta Neves, Institute of Agronomy, Technical University of Lisbon, Tapada da Ajuda, 1349-017 Lisbon, Portugal. fmoreira@isa.utl.pt
authors: Francisco
authors: F
authors: Moreira
authors: Olga
authors: O
authors: Viedma
authors: Margarita
authors: M
authors: Arianoutsou
authors: Thomas
authors: T
authors: Curt
authors: Nikos
authors: N
authors: Koutsias
authors: Eric
authors: E
authors: Rigolot
authors: Anna
authors: A
authors: Barbati
authors: Piermaria
authors: P
authors: Corona
authors: Pedro
authors: P
authors: Vaz
authors: Gavriil
authors: G
authors: Xanthopoulos
authors: Florent
authors: F
authors: Mouillot
authors: Ertugrul
authors: E
authors: Bilgili
mesh_terms: D002980:Climate; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D058735:Environmental Policy; D005390:Fires; D006801:Humans; D019083:Mediterranean Region; D010944:Plants; D014887:Weather