Fire in the Earth System: Humans and Nature

A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 December 2021) | Viewed by 17262

Special Issue Editors

Department of Agriculture, Hellenic Mediterranean University, 71410 Heraklion, Greece
Interests: sustainable management of waste and natural resources
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleague,

Fire is a key component of the earth system and a prehistoric evolutionary tool for humankind to manage the landscape and to maintain land productivity. In the 21st century, fire is still at the forefront of environmental management but can still defy our understanding and preparedness mechanisms. To face fire-related challenges, scientists, citizens, and practitioners must interact and network. This Special Issue “Fire in the Earth System: Humans and Nature” proposes a hybrid publication with scientists, citizens, and practitioners to share information, ideas, and goals to use fire as a tool for sustainability.

We invite participants with backgrounds from fire dynamics, fire risk management, fire effects on vegetation, fauna, soil and water, and socio-economic, historical, geographical, political, cultural, artistic, perception, and land management approaches. We aim to connect scientific communities around the world with practitioners and citizens that will share different experiences and will boost the emergence of new approaches to fire research. This Special Issue will help to synthesize existing knowledge and to create fire-resilient landscapes based on integrated approaches that not only include biological, biochemical, and physical research, but also socio-economic, historical, geographical, and sociological research and considers stakeholder perceptions and policy constraints.

Research papers on (i) fire dynamics, (ii) fire risk management, (iii) fire effects on biota (flora and fauna), (iv) fire effects on soil and water, (v) socio-economic, historical, geographical, political, and perceptions of fire, (vi) land management approaches, (vii) human evolution and fire, (viii) fire prevention and suppression; and, (ix) fire and culture, are welcome. Other topics related to the interaction of nature, fire, and humans are also welcome for this Special Issue.

For each of these topics, we would like to INVITE YOU to submit your paper.

Prof. Dr. Artemi Cerdà
Dr. Ioannis N. Daliakopoulos
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • fire dynamics
  • forest fire
  • fire risk management
  • fire effects
  • human evolution
  • environmental impact
  • soils
  • water resources
  • plants
  • fauna
  • fire prevention and suppression

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 5243 KiB  
Article
Assessment of Fire Effects on Surface Runoff Erosion Susceptibility: The Case of the Summer 2021 Forest Fires in Greece
by Niki Evelpidou, Maria Tzouxanioti, Theodore Gavalas, Evangelos Spyrou, Giannis Saitis, Alexandros Petropoulos and Anna Karkani
Land 2022, 11(1), 21; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/land11010021 - 23 Dec 2021
Cited by 21 | Viewed by 4752
Abstract
The wildfires of summer 2021 in Greece were among the most severe forest fire events that have occurred in the country over the past decade. The conflagration period lasted for 20 days (i.e., from 27 July to 16 August 2021) and resulted in [...] Read more.
The wildfires of summer 2021 in Greece were among the most severe forest fire events that have occurred in the country over the past decade. The conflagration period lasted for 20 days (i.e., from 27 July to 16 August 2021) and resulted in the devastation of an area of more than 3600 Km2. Forest fire events of similar severity also struck other Mediterranean countries during this period. Apart from their direct impacts, forest fires also render an area more susceptible to runoff erosion by massively removing its vegetation, among other factors. It is clear that immediately after a forest fire, most areas are much more susceptible to erosion. In this paper, we evaluate the erosion hazard of Attica, Northern Euboea, and the Peloponnese that were devastated by forest fires during the summer of 2021 in Greece, in comparison with their geological and geomorphological structures, as well as land cover and management. Given that a very significant part of these areas were burnt during the major conflagrations of this summer, erosion risk, as well as flood risk, are expected to be very high, especially for the coming autumn and winter. For the evaluation of erosion risk, the burnt areas were mapped, and the final erosion-risk maps were constructed through GIS software. The final maps suggest that most of the burnt areas are highly susceptible to future surface runoff erosion events. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fire in the Earth System: Humans and Nature)
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15 pages, 29849 KiB  
Article
Emerging Anthropogenic Influences on the Southcentral Alaska Temperature and Precipitation Extremes and Related Fires in 2019
by Uma S. Bhatt, Rick T. Lader, John E. Walsh, Peter A. Bieniek, Richard Thoman, Matthew Berman, Cecilia Borries-Strigle, Kristi Bulock, Jonathan Chriest, Micah Hahn, Amy S. Hendricks, Randi Jandt, Joseph Little, Daniel McEvoy, Chris Moore, T. Scott Rupp, Jennifer Schmidt, Eric Stevens, Heidi Strader, Christine Waigl, James White, Alison York and Robert Zieladd Show full author list remove Hide full author list
Land 2021, 10(1), 82; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/land10010082 - 17 Jan 2021
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 6890
Abstract
The late-season extreme fire activity in Southcentral Alaska during 2019 was highly unusual and consequential. Firefighting operations had to be extended by a month in 2019 due to the extreme conditions of hot summer temperature and prolonged drought. The ongoing fires created poor [...] Read more.
The late-season extreme fire activity in Southcentral Alaska during 2019 was highly unusual and consequential. Firefighting operations had to be extended by a month in 2019 due to the extreme conditions of hot summer temperature and prolonged drought. The ongoing fires created poor air quality in the region containing most of Alaska’s population, leading to substantial impacts to public health. Suppression costs totaled over $70 million for Southcentral Alaska. This study’s main goals are to place the 2019 season into historical context, provide an attribution analysis, and assess future changes in wildfire risk in the region. The primary tools are meteorological observations and climate model simulations from the NCAR CESM Large Ensemble (LENS). The 2019 fire season in Southcentral Alaska included the hottest and driest June–August season over the 1979–2019 period. The LENS simulation analysis suggests that the anthropogenic signal of increased fire risk had not yet emerged in 2019 because of the CESM’s internal variability, but that the anthropogenic signal will emerge by the 2040–2080 period. The effect of warming temperatures dominates the effect of enhanced precipitation in the trend towards increased fire risk. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fire in the Earth System: Humans and Nature)
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12 pages, 1027 KiB  
Communication
Reclassifying the Wildland–Urban Interface Using Fire Occurrences for the United States
by Brice B. Hanberry
Land 2020, 9(7), 225; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/land9070225 - 11 Jul 2020
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3393
Abstract
The wildland–urban interface (WUI) occurs at the intersection of houses and undeveloped wildlands, where fire is a safety concern for communities, motivating investment in planning, protection, and risk mitigation. Because there is no operational definition of WUI based on where fires in fact [...] Read more.
The wildland–urban interface (WUI) occurs at the intersection of houses and undeveloped wildlands, where fire is a safety concern for communities, motivating investment in planning, protection, and risk mitigation. Because there is no operational definition of WUI based on where fires in fact have occurred, I used fire occurrences to objectively establish a definition of WUI, while examining spatiotemporal changes, for the conterminous United States. I applied four classifiers, but focused on C5.0, which produced equivalent sensitivity (0.87 to 0.91 at prevalence = 0.67) and generated a ruleset that indicated housing density was the preferable basis for definitions. Fire occurrences overall were predicted for housing densities <100 houses/km2 with potentially low (≥10%) thresholds for percent vegetation cover, varying by housing densities and models. A generalized guideline according to classifications is continued use of existing definitions for wildlands of <6.17 houses/km2 and a low-density intermix class of 6.17 to 50 houses/km2. Departing from other definitions, the medium-density class encompasses 50 to 100 houses/km2 and the high-density class is 100 to 200 houses/km2. Interface, or suburban, communities are 200 to 400 houses/km2. Implications of refining the definition include a larger critical area classified as greater fire risk (low and medium-density WUI below 100 houses/km2) at 855,000 km2 during 2010, and; therefore, incorporation of more communities and homeowners into a high-risk status. The low-density class had greatest risk of fire exposure, but the medium-density class contained a greater concentration of houses. Classification of the wildland–urban interface or intermix based on realized fire occurrences provides an objective foundation for identifying residential densities at risk of fire exposure, which permits disclosure of risk, prioritization of resources to communities and homeowners with greater wildfire exposure, development of strategies for communities to coexist with fire, and responses to reduce vulnerability. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fire in the Earth System: Humans and Nature)
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