Register      Login
International Journal of Wildland Fire International Journal of Wildland Fire Society
Journal of the International Association of Wildland Fire
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Statistical analysis of fire frequency models for Catalonia (NE Spain), 1975–1998) based on fire scar maps from Landsat MSS data

Ricardo Díaz-Delgado A D , Francisco Lloret A B and Xavier Pons A C
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A CREAF, Facultat de Ciències, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, 08193 Barcelona, Spain.

B email: francisco.lloret@uab.es

C Departament de Geografia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, 08193 Barcelona, Spain. email: xavier.pons@uab.es

D Corresponding author. Present address: Estación Biológica de Doñana, Avda María Luisa s/n., 41013 Sevilla, Spain. Telephone: +34 5 423 2340, ext. 119; fax: +34 5 462 1125; email: rdiaz@ebd.csic.es

International Journal of Wildland Fire 13(1) 89-99 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF02051
Submitted: 15 July 2002  Accepted: 20 August 2003   Published: 8 April 2004

Abstract

This paper estimates fire frequency in Catalonia (NE Spain) for the last quarter of the 20th Century (1975–1998) from historical burned area maps. Remote sensing images provided perimeters of fires ≥ 30 ha, which were used to characterize the temporal patterns of fire occurrence in Catalonia. Several fire frequency models were used to reproduce the observed pattern of wildfires occurrence in the study period. Natural fire rotation period was estimated to be 133 years. Poisson tests were carried out to check random fire occurrence either along the time period or across the analysed region. Observed fires were not randomly generated either in space or in time, despite being sampled using two different plot sizes. This sampling design was also used for Mean Fire Interval (MFI) analysis, which allowed us to significantly fit a Weibull distribution to the observed proportion of fire intervals (for both sample sizes), enabling us to estimate the hazard of burning, mortality, and survivorship functions. Finally, MFI was also applied to forest regions of Catalonia, which are defined according to forest management plans based on their homogeneous climatic conditions. Such an analysis revealed relevant differences in forest management and their consequences on fire occurrence.


Acknowledgements

The authors express their gratitude to the ICC for technical assistance. We also appreciate the help from the DMA who supplied the GIS layers of 1994 and 1995 wildfire perimeters; and to the DARP and the old ICONA, for the fire statistics. We also thank Joseph Fall from the Forest Ecology Group (REM, SFU) for his Tutorial on Common Methods for Determining Fire Frequency, which greatly helped the authors to understand fire frequency methods and to Jordi Bascompte who kindly read the manuscript and offered positive comments on it. Financial support for this work came from the CICYT-MEC (AMB94–0881 and AGL2000–0678 projects), and a grant to R. Díaz-Delgado by MEC. The study was also partially funded by the Lucifer EC project.


References


Agee JK (1993) Fire ecology of Pacific Northwest forests (Island Press: Washington)  

Arno SF , Sneck KM (1977) A method for determining fire history in coniferous forests of the mountain west. USDA Forest Service, General Technical Report INT-42 (Ogden, UT)

Baker WL (1992) Effects of settlement and fire suppression on landscape structure. Ecology  73, 1879–1887.


Chandler C,  Cheney P,  Thomas P,  Trabaud L,  Williams D (1983) Fire in forestry (Wiley: New York)  

Chou YH, Minnich RA , Dezzani RJ (1993) Do fire sizes differ between Southern California and Baja California? Forest Science  39, 835–844.


Clavero P,  Martín-Vide J,  Raso JM (1997) Atles climàtic de Catalunya 1:500 000 (DMA-ICC: Barcelona)  

Date CJ (1995) An introduction to database systems (Addison-Wesley: Reading)  

DGMN (1994) Pla General de Política Forestal (DARP: Barcelona)  

Díaz-Delgado R , Pons X (2001) Spatial patterns of forest fires in Catalonia (NE Spain) along the period 1975–1995. Analysis of vegetation recovery after fire. Forest Ecology and Management  147, 67–74.
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |

Díaz-Delgado R, Lloret F, Pons X , Terradas J (2002) Satellite evidence of decreasing resilience in Mediterranean plant communities after recurrent wildfires. Ecology  83, 2293–2303.


Eastman JR (1992) Idrisi user's guide. Technical reference (Clark University: Worcester, MA)  

Fall JG (1998) ‘Reconstructing the historical frequency of fire: a modelling approach to developing and testing methods.’ SFR No. 255 (School of Resource and Environmental Management: Burnaby)  

Fox MD ,  Fox BJ (1987) The role of fire in the scleromorphic forests and shrublands of eastern Australia. In The role of fire in ecological systems (Ed.  L Trabaud )  pp. 23–48. (SPB Academic Publishing: The Hague)

Gill AM (1975) Fire and the Australian flora: a review. Australian Forestry  38, 4–25.


Heinselman ML (1973) Fire in the virgin forests of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Minnesota. Quaternary Research  3, 329–382.


Heyerdahl EK , Agee JK (1996) Final Report. (College of Forest Resources: Washington)

Johnson EA , Larsen CPS (1991) Climatically induced change in fire frequency in the southern Canadian Rockies. Ecology  72, 194–201.


Johnson EA , Gutsell SL (1994) Fire frequency models, methods and interpretations. Advances in Ecological Research  25, 239–287.


Kasischke ES,  Stocks BJ (2000) Fire, climate change, and carbon cycling in the boreal forest (Springer Verlag: New York)  

Keeley JE, Fotheringham CJ , Morais M (1999) Reexamining fire suppression impacts on brushland fire regimes. Science  284, 1829–1832.
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | PubMed |

Kilgore BM , Taylor D (1979) Fire history of a sequoia–mixed conifer forest. Ecology  60, 129–142.


Maffini G (1987) Raster versus vector data encoding and handling: a commentary. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing  53, 1397–1398.


Minnich RA (1983) Fire mosaics in southern California and northern Baja California. Science  219, 1287–1294.


Minnich RA , Chou YH (1997) Wildland fire patch dynamics in the chaparral of southern California and northern Baja California. International Journal of Wildland Fire  7, 221–248.


Moritz MA (1997) Analyzing extreme disturbances events: fire in Los Padres national forest. Ecological Applications  7, 1252–1262.


Oberle M (1969) Forest fires: supression policy has its ecological drawbacks. Science  187, 568–571.


Pérez B , Moreno JM (1998) Methods for quantifying fire severity in shrubland-fires. Plant Ecology  139, 91–101.
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |

Piñol J, Terrada J , Lloret F (1998) Climate warming, wildfire hazard and wildfire occurrence in coastal eastern España. Climatic Change  38, 345–367.
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |

Pla E , Rodà F (1999) Aproximació a la dinàmica successional de combustible en brolles mediterrànies. Orsis  14, 79–103.


Press AJ (1988) Comparisons of the extent of fire in different land management systems in the Top End of the Northern Territory. Proceedings of the Ecological Society of Australia  15, 167–175.


Reed WJ, Larsen CPS, Johnson EA , MacDonald GM (1997) Estimation of temporal variations in historical fire frequency from time-since-fire map data. Forest Science  44, 465–475.


Retana J (1996) Característiques d'intensitat i extensió dels incendis. In Ecologia del foc (Ed.  J Terradas )  pp. 59–62. (Proa: Barcelona)

Russell-Smith J, Ryan PG, Klessa D, Waight G , Harwood R (1998) Fire regimes, fire-sensitive vegetation and fire management of the sandstone Arnhem Plateau, monsoonal northern Australia. Journal of Applied Ecology  35, 829–846.


Salvador R, Valeriano J, Pons X , Díaz-Delgado R (2000) A semiautomatic methodology to detect fire scars in shrubs and evergreen forests with Landsat MSS time series. International Journal of Remote Sensing  21, 655–673.
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |

Strauss D, Bednar L , Mees R (1989) Do one percent of forest fires cause ninety-nine percent of the damage? Forest Science  35, 319–328.


Swetnam TW (1993) Fire history and climate change in giant sequoia groves. Science  262, 885–889.


Trabaud L (1987) Fire and the survival traits of plants. In The role of fire in ecological systems (Ed.  L Trabaud )  pp. 65–89. (SPB Academic Publishing: The Hague)

Van Wagner CE (1978) Age-class distribution and the forest fire cycle. Canadian Journal of Forest Research  8, 220–227.


Vázquez A , Moreno J (1998) Patterns of lightning- and people-caused fires in peninsular Spain. International Journal of Wildland Fire  8, 103–115.


Wells ML , McKinsey DE (1990) Using a geographic information system for prescribed fire management at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, California. Proceedings of the GIS ‘90 Symposium (GIS ‘90: Los Angeles)

Whelan RJ (1995) The ecology of fire (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge)  

Yin ZY (1993) Fire regime of the Okefenokee swamp and its relation to hydrological and climate conditions. International Journal of Wildland Fire  3, 229–240.