Large wildland fires and extreme temperatures in Sardinia (Italy)

doi:10.3832/ifor1090-007

Large wildland fires and extreme temperatures in Sardinia (Italy)

Adrian Cardil⁽¹⁾ , Michele Salis^(2-3), Donatella Spano^(2-3), Giuseppe Delogu⁽⁴⁾, Domingo Molina Terrén⁽¹⁾

iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry, Volume 7, Issue 3, Pages 162-169 (2014)
doi: https://doi.org/10.3832/ifor1090-007
Published: Feb 14, 2014 - Copyright © 2014 SISEF

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Heat-wave events are commonly recognized as adverse impacts on agriculture, forests, and economic activities. Several studies showed that future climate changes in the western Mediterranean Basin will lead to an increase in extreme weather events, mainly in the summer season. For this reason, it is crucial to improve our knowledge and investigate the effects of extreme temperature events on wildland fire activity. This work analyses the relation between high temperature days (air temperature higher than 25°C at 850hPa) and large wildland fires in Sardinia (Italy) during 1991-2009 period and the influence of high temperature days on large wildland fires was remarkable. The results showed that neither the number of fires nor the area burned decreased under high temperature days, although a decrease of both indicators was observed on the other days. Additionally, the average size of fires, the probability of large fire occurrence, the daily area burned and daily number of fires resulted higher in high temperature days.

Keywords

Wildfires, Temperature, Extreme, Weather

Authors’ address

(1)

School of Agrifood and Forestry Science and Engineering, University of Lleida, av.da Rovira Roure 191, E-25198 Lleida (Spain)

(2)

Department of Science for Nature and Environmental Resources (DIPNET), University of Sassari (Italy)

(3)

Euro Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC), IAFENT Division, Sassari (Italy)

(4)

Corpo Forestale e di Vigilanza Ambientale, Regione Sardegna, Cagliari (Italy)

Corresponding author

Adrian Cardil
adriancardil@gmail.com

Citation

Cardil A, Salis M, Spano D, Delogu G, Molina Terrén D (2014). Large wildland fires and extreme temperatures in Sardinia (Italy). iForest 7: 162-169. - doi: 10.3832/ifor1090-007

Academic Editor

Raffaele Lafortezza

Paper history

Received: Jul 27, 2013
Accepted: Oct 21, 2013

First online: Feb 14, 2014
Publication Date: Jun 02, 2014
Publication Time: 3.87 months

Open Access

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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