Differentiating Fire Regimes and Their Biophysical Drivers in Central Portugal

Fire

article

Rafaello Bergonse¹  Sandra Oliveira¹  José Luís Zêzere¹  Francisco Moreira²  Paulo Flores Ribeiro⁵  Miguel Leal⁵  José Manuel Lima Santos⁵ 

[1] Centre of Geographical Studies, Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning and Associate Laboratory TERRA, Universidade de Lisboa, Rua Branca Edmée Marques, Cidade Universitária;CIBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, InBIO Laboratório Associado, Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade de Lisboa;CIBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, InBIO Laboratório Associado, Campus de Vairão, Universidade do Porto;BIOPOLIS Program in Genomics, Biodiversity and Land Planning, CIBIO, Campus de Vairão;Forest Research Centre, Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade de Lisboa, Edifício Prof, Azevedo Gomes, Instituto Superior de Agronomia

关键词: fire regime;    biophysical drivers;    machine learning;    classification and regression trees;    central Portugal;   

DOI  :  10.3390/fire6030112

学科分类：环境科学（综合）

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

We characterize fire regimes in central Portugal and investigate the degree to which the differences between regimes are influenced by a set of biophysical drivers. Using civil parishes as units of analysis, we employ three complementary parameters to describe the fire regime over a reference period of 44 years (1975–2018), namely cumulative percentage of parish area burned, Gini concentration index of burned area over time, and area-weighted total number of wildfires. Cluster analysis is used to aggregate parishes into groups with similar fire regimes based on these parameters. A classification tree model is then used to assess the capacity of a set of potential biophysical drivers to discriminate between the different parish groups. The results allowed us to distinguish four types of fire regime and show that these can be significantly differentiated using the biophysical drivers, of which land use/land cover (LULC), slope, and spring rainfall are the most important. Among LULC classes, shrubland and herbaceous vegetation play the foremost role, followed by agriculture. Our results highlight the importance of vegetation type, availability, and rate of regeneration, as well as that of topography, in influencing fire regimes in the study area, while suggesting that these regimes should be subject to specific wildfire prevention and mitigation policies.

【 授权许可】

CC BY