GRADIENT · Understanding fire, weather and land cover interactions from long-term terrestrial observations and satellite data in a north to south transect in Europe and North Africa
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2016-07-01 → 2017-09-30
- EU contribution
- €117,137
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Understanding fire, weather and land cover interactions from long-term terrestrial observations and satellite data in a north to south transect in Europe and North Africa
Long-term historical time series records of fire activity (number of fires and total area burned) extending back to the late 1800s, that are very rare worldwide, were found and used within the GRADIENT project that correspond to (i) Switzerland, central Europe (1900-2014), (ii) Greece, south Europe (1897-2014), (iii) Algeria, north Africa (1870-2014) and (iv) Tunisia (1902-2015), north Africa which together with the spatial-explicit reconstruction of recent fire history from Landsat satellite images (1984-2016), gave a unique and excellent opportunity to understand fire, weather and land use/land cover (LULC) interactions in a north to south transect. The Tunisia study case was added during the implementation period of the project since in the original proposal only the first three study cases were proposed. Differences in bio-geographical characteristics provided by the four selected study areas, located on a large geographical gradient covering two continents gave the opportunity to document the role of fire in different biomes, to explore cross-scale issues and assess how fire-weather-LULC interactions vary across different scales, especially under a climate change context. GRADIENT project consisted of three topics that correspond mainly to three different scales. The specific objectives were: (i) the identification of trends, patterns and relationships between forest fires, weather, land cover and socio-economic variables from long-term observations, (ii) the reconstruction of recent fire history and the assessment of burning patterns and fire selectivity on an annual basis from satellite images, and (iii) the exploration of post-fire vegetation dynamics and recovery for selected large fire events using time series satellite images.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Long-term historical fire records extending back to the late 1800s are very rare worldwide. Three such long-term historical fire data have been found for this research proposal; (i) Switzerland, central Europe (1900-2014), (ii) Greece, south Europe (1897-2014), and (iii) Algeria, north Africa (1870-2014) which together with the spatial-explicit reconstruction of recent fire history from Landsat satellite images (1984-2016), give a unique and excellent opportunity to understand fire, weather and land use/land cover (LULC) interactions in a north to south transect.Differences in bio-geographical characteristics provided by the three study areas, located on a large geographical gradient covering two continents give the opportunity to document the role of fires in different biomes, to explore cross-scale issues and assess how fire-weather-LULC relationships vary across different scales, especially under a climate change context.This research proposal consists of three topics that correspond mainly to three different scales. The specific objectives are: (i) the identification of trends, patterns and relationships between forest fires, weather, LULC and socio-economic parameters from long-term observations, (ii) the reconstruction of recent fire history and the assessment of burning patterns and fire selectivity on an annual basis from satellite images, and (iii) the exploration of post-fire vegetation dynamics and recovery patterns for selected large fire events using time series satellite images.Those objectives will contribute to the better understanding of fire, weather and land cover interactions, and will therefore provide knowledge for fire and land cover management practices, especially under a climate change context. Understanding of post-fire vegetation dynamics and recovery will help the mitigation of short and long-term consequences of fire occurrence. The knowledge acquired from the past will help to understand current processes and project them to future.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- EIDGENOSSISCHE FORSCHUNGSANSTALT WSL · BirmensdorfCoordinatorSwitzerland
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/705067
- https://arquivo.pt/wayback/20200207120916/https://www.wsl.ch/en/projects/fire-weather-and-land-cover-interactions.html
- https://www.wsl.ch/en/projects/fire-weather-and-land-cover-interactions.html
Data: CORDIS, © European Union