Journal article
Disentangling the Influence of Past Fires on Subsequent Fires in Mediterranean Landscapes
A Duane, L Kelly, K Giljohann, E Batllori, M McCarthy, L Brotons
Ecosystems | SPRINGER | Published : 2019
Abstract
Understanding the interplay between climate, fuel and fire is necessary for developing strategies that minimize the negative impacts of fire on people and ecosystems. Here, we aim to investigate whether past fires limit fire activity by reducing fuel availability (‘fire leverage’) in Catalonia (NE Spain; 32,107 km2), a Mediterranean region encompassing diverse landscapes of agricultural plains and pine–oak mosaics. We built a hierarchical model to assess variations in annual burnt area in relation to weather, past fires and time for a 40-year period (1976–2015). The model also quantified how mean annual wind speed and the arrangement of forests modulated leverage. We found that the cumulated..
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Awarded by Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
This study was funded by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad from the Spanish Government through the INMODES project (CGL2017-89999-C2-2-R) and the TIPMED project (CGL-2017-87176-P). The research leading to these results has also received funding from 'la Caixa' Banking Foundation and from the CERCA Programme from Generalitat de Catalunya. Andrea Duane was funded by the Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte (Spain) (FPU13/00108) and (EST16/00984). Luke Kelly was supported by a Victorian Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, funded by veski on behalf of the Victorian Government, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions.