In less than 15 years, the Amazon region experienced three major droughts. Links between droughts and fires have been demonstrated for the 1997/1998, 2005, and 2010 droughts. In 2010, emissions of 510 ± 120 Tg C were associated to fire alone in Amazonia. Existing approaches have, however, not yet disentangled the proportional contribution of multiple land cover sources to this total. We develop...

The modeling of fire spread in a flammable area is an interesting and challenging issue, widely studied in literature. Some of the models used for fire front evolution prediction are based on Cellular Automata (CA) approach, and they have shown a good agreement with other models and with experimental data. In this paper, the authors propose a new approach to this kind of models, introducing an ...

Knowing the types and amounts of fuels at a site is an important prerequisite to evaluating fire risk, predicting fire behavior, and assessing potential fire effects. When these assessments are expanded to larger extents, the spatial configuration of the landscape fuel mosaic must also be considered (Keane et al. 2000: Keane et al. 1998). Spatial patterns of fuels, topography, and wind all inte...

In this study, drought conditions involving risk of fires are detected applying SMOSderived soil moisture data and land surface temperature models. Moisture-temperature (SM-LST) patterns studied between 2010 and 2014 were linked to main fire regimes in the Iberian Peninsula. Most wildfires burned in warm and dry soils, but the analysis of pre-fire conditions differed among seasons. Absolute val...

Across much of the globe, fire is a major disturbance agent of forest and grassland communities. The removal of fire from previously fire-maintained ecosystems, which has occurred in many areas, changes species composition, favoring later less fire tolerant species over fire-adapted ones. A recent measured increase in the rate of hybridization between the fire-adapted shortleaf pine (Pinus echi...

Miombo woodlands are crucial to the livelihoods of rural people throughout southern, eastern and central Africa. This paper describes a dynamic simulation model of key ecological processes in miombo and examines the ecological and economic impacts of various forms of management. The model shows that removing harvestable trees and reducing the level of grazing by livestock causes an increase in ...

Periodic wildfire maintains the integrity and species composition of many ecosystems, including the mediterranean-climate shrublands of California. However, human activities alter natural fire regimes, which can lead to cascading ecological effects. Increased human ignitions at the wildland-urban interface (WUI) have recently gained attention, but fire activity and risk are typically estimated ...