title: Decreasing Fires in Mediterranean Europe.
abstract: Forest fires are a serious environmental hazard in southern Europe. Quantitative assessment of recent trends in fire statistics is important for assessing the possible shifts induced by climate and other environmental/socioeconomic changes in this area. Here we analyse recent fire trends in Portugal, Spain, southern France, Italy and Greece, building on a homogenized fire database integrating official fire statistics provided by several national/EU agencies. During the period 1985-2011, the total annual burned area (BA) displayed a general decreasing trend, with the exception of Portugal, where a heterogeneous signal was found. Considering all countries globally, we found that BA decreased by about 3020 km2 over the 27-year-long study period (i.e. about -66% of the mean historical value). These results are consistent with those obtained on longer time scales when data were available, also yielding predominantly negative trends in Spain and France (1974-2011) and a mixed trend in Portugal (1980-2011). Similar overall results were found for the annual number of fires (NF), which globally decreased by about 12600 in the study period (about -59%), except for Spain where, excluding the provinces along the Mediterranean coast, an upward trend was found for the longer period. We argue that the negative trends can be explained, at least in part, by an increased effort in fire management and prevention after the big fires of the 1980's, while positive trends may be related to recent socioeconomic transformations leading to more hazardous landscape configurations, as well as to the observed warming of recent decades. We stress the importance of fire data homogenization prior to analysis, in order to alleviate spurious effects associated with non-stationarities in the data due to temporal variations in fire detection efforts.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (ISAC), National Research Council (CNR), Corso Fiume 4, 10133 Torino, Italy.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Turco
authors.affiliation: Meteorology Group, Institute of Physics of Cantabria, CSIC - Universidad de Cantabria, Avda. Los Castros s/n, 39005 Santander, Spain.
authors.forename: Joaquín
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bedia
authors.affiliation: State Forestry Corps, Viale Antonio Ciamarra 139, 00173 Roma, Italy.
authors.forename: Fabrizio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Di Liberto
authors.affiliation: CIMA Research Foundation, Via Armando Magliotto 2, 17100 Savona, Italy.
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Fiorucci
authors.affiliation: Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (ISAC), National Research Council (CNR), Corso Fiume 4, 10133 Torino, Italy.
authors.forename: Jost
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: von Hardenberg
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental and Natural Resources Management, University of Patras, Seferi 2, 30100 Agrinio, Greece.
authors.forename: Nikos
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Koutsias
authors.affiliation: Department of Astronomy and Meteorology, University of Barcelona, Av. Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Maria-Carmen
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Llasat
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental and Natural Resources Management, University of Patras, Seferi 2, 30100 Agrinio, Greece.
authors.forename: Fotios
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Xystrakis
authors.affiliation: Institute of Geosciences and Earth Resources (IGG), National Research Council (CNR), Via Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy.
authors.forename: Antonello
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Provenzale
mesh_terms: D005060:Europe; D005390:Fires / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005544:Forecasting; D019083:Mediterranean Region