Spatial Variability of Wildfire Causes in French Eastern Mediterranean Regions †
by
Claudio Ribotta
1,*, 
José Maria Costa-Saura
1,2,
Valentina Bacciu
2,3,
Costantino Sirca
1,2 and
Donatella Spano
1,2 1
Department of Agriculture, University of Sassari, 07100 Sassari, Italy
2
IAFES Division, CMCC Foundation, 07100 Sassari, Italy
3
National Research Council, Institute of BioEconomy (CNR-IBE), 07100 Sassari, Italy
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
†
Presented at the Third International Conference on Fire Behavior and Risk, Sardinia, Italy, 3–6 May 2022.
Environ. Sci. Proc. 2022, 17(1), 110; https://doi.org/10.3390/environsciproc2022017110
Published: 30 August 2022
(This article belongs to the Proceedings of The Third International Conference on Fire Behavior and Risk)
The study of wildfire’s causes and ignition patterns, which in the Mediterranean area, are mainly directly or indirectly linked to human activities, is essential for designing effective wildfire risks reduction measures and to mitigate the related impacts on ecosystems and livelihoods.
The causes that underlie the ignition pattern vary across the socio-economic and environmental factors. Furthermore, within the same territorial context, wildfire causes are not spatially uniform and often are aggregated in spatio-temporal clusters. This substantially increases the variability of wildfire ignition patterns even within the same territory.
The main difficulty in studying the spatio-temporal distribution of wildfire causes is due to the limited data available and lack of homogeneity in the available databases. However, the detail and reliability of the databases of some countries are better than in the past; for instance, the case of the French database Promethèe (https://www.promethee.com/ accessed on 18 November 2020), which since 2012 classifies wildfire causes with greater detail than in the past.
In this work, using data from the Promethèe database, we investigated the spatial variability and the incidence rate of different wildfire causes in the French Eastern Mediterranean regions PACA (Provence-Alps-Cote d’Azur) and Corse, within the framework of the Italy-France Maritime MED-Star project. For each administrative unit of the European NUTS3 level, the incidence rate of the different wildfire causes was identified. Furthermore, using the DFCI grid, the level of analysis of the fire causes’ spatial variability was further detailed, allowing us to identify the spatial clusters of aggregation of the most frequent causes of wildfires.
This work allowed us to demonstrate and describe the strong spatial variability of wildfire causes, providing a basis for further follow-up studies on wildfire ignition patterns and supporting territorial-specific policies for better contrasting wildfire ignitions.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization, C.R., J.M.C.-S., V.B., C.S., D.S.; methodology, C.R., J.M.C.-S., V.B., C.S., D.S.; formal analysis, C.R., J.M.C.-S.; investigation, C.R., J.M.C.-S.; resources, C.R., J.M.C.-S.; data curation, C.R.; writing—original draft preparation, C.R., J.M.C.-S.; writing—review and editing, V.B., C.S., D.S.; supervision, V.B., C.S., D.S.; project administration, C.S., D.S.; funding acquisition, C.S., D.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This research was funded by “MED-Star” project, supported by the European Union under the cross-border Programma Italia-Francia Marittimo 2014–2020.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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MDPI and ACS Style
Ribotta, C.; Costa-Saura, J.M.; Bacciu, V.; Sirca, C.; Spano, D. Spatial Variability of Wildfire Causes in French Eastern Mediterranean Regions. Environ. Sci. Proc. 2022, 17, 110. https://doi.org/10.3390/environsciproc2022017110
AMA Style
Ribotta C, Costa-Saura JM, Bacciu V, Sirca C, Spano D. Spatial Variability of Wildfire Causes in French Eastern Mediterranean Regions. Environmental Sciences Proceedings. 2022; 17(1):110. https://doi.org/10.3390/environsciproc2022017110
Chicago/Turabian StyleRibotta, Claudio, José Maria Costa-Saura, Valentina Bacciu, Costantino Sirca, and Donatella Spano. 2022. "Spatial Variability of Wildfire Causes in French Eastern Mediterranean Regions" Environmental Sciences Proceedings 17, no. 1: 110. https://doi.org/10.3390/environsciproc2022017110
