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Advances in Incorporating Fire in Social-Ecological Models
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Advances in Incorporating Fire in Social-Ecological Models

A special issue of Fire (ISSN 2571-6255). This special issue belongs to the section "Mathematical Modelling and Numerical Simulation of Combustion and Fire".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 November 2023) | Viewed by 13280

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Andreas Troumbis

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Environment, University of the Aegean, Mytilene, Greece
Interests: terrestrial ecosystems management; conservation biology; landscape fragmentation and species persistence; environmental policies for local sustainable activities

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Wildfire is a systemic phenomenon evolving, influencing, and differencing in importance and severity to humans, their culture, and the technosphere. Under incumbent planetary and climate change transition scenarios, particular drivers determine different aspects of wildfire events as a physical phenomenon (i.e., the physics of ignition and propagation), as a regime (i.e., location, timing or seasonality and frequency of fire, the typical size of the fire, and its severity in terms of the amount of biomass burned), and as risk and hazard (i.e., land-use change, value and pressures, and institutional framework). Modeling such wildfire aspects requires input from multiple scientific fields and disciplines that reasonably support understanding, prediction, and decision-making in these significant risks faced by modern societies.

This Special Issue on ‘Advances in Incorporating Fire in Social-Ecological Models’ aims to explore recent advances in a series of themes including:

  • Ecological and biophysical models of wildfire effects in fire-prone ecosystems: are they adaptable to changing biospheric conditions?
  • Effects and impacts upon biodiversity and ecosystem and services: physical, social and economic valuation
  • Time series analysis of fire events and forecasting of mega-fires under climate transition
  • Modeling wildfire behavior and dynamics: evolving targets for the technology of fire prediction, detection, and suppression
  • Wildfire: risks and hazards in the urban-wild interface
  • Wildfire: civil society and citizen science, new data sources for modeling response strategies

Prof. Dr. Andreas Troumbis
Guest Editor

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. Fire 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 2400 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.

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 5736 KiB  
Article
Monchique’s Innovation Laboratory—A Space for Dialogue and Knowledge Sharing to Foster Community-Based Disaster Risk Reduction
by Joana Dias, Guilherme Saad, Ana Soares, Maria Partidário, Isabel Loupa Ramos, Rute Martins and Margarida B. Monteiro
Fire 2024, 7(1), 1; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire7010001 - 19 Dec 2023
Viewed by 1355
Abstract
BRIDGE (bridging science and local communities for wildfire risk reduction) is an action–research project developing a community-based disaster risk reduction (CBDRR) process which is being fostered through a collaborative innovation laboratory (InnoLab). BRIDGE integrates different forms of knowledge and action, linking science and [...] Read more.
BRIDGE (bridging science and local communities for wildfire risk reduction) is an action–research project developing a community-based disaster risk reduction (CBDRR) process which is being fostered through a collaborative innovation laboratory (InnoLab). BRIDGE integrates different forms of knowledge and action, linking science and local communities to reduce their vulnerability and to enhance strategies for forest fire risk reduction. Applied in Monchique, a forest-fire-prone municipality in Portugal, the InnoLab creates a space for dialogue and knowledge sharing between multiple actors that, directly or indirectly, manage forest territories. BRIDGE attempts to facilitate social learning about forest fire risks, strengthen collaborative networks and enhance adaptive capacities (socially and institutionally) for forest fire prevention. This paper shares results of the InnoLab activities, which include (i) school community activities on wildfire risk perception; (ii) participatory mapping of Monchique’s vulnerabilities and risks; (iii) participatory sessions to create the community visioning for Monchique’s territory, to define priorities and capacities to be improved, and to identify functions and responsibilities to act upon; and (iv) workshop on CBDRR strategies for action. Lessons are shared on how InnoLab can represent an innovative participatory approach to promote CBDRR processes in forest-fire-prone territories by both contributing to the recognition of local knowledge systems and encouraging the active role of forest communities through strengthened local networks for a more lasting commitment to forest fire risk reduction policy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Incorporating Fire in Social-Ecological Models)
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23 pages, 5246 KiB  
Article
The Influence of Socioeconomic Factors on Human Wildfire Ignitions in the Pacific Northwest, USA
by Caitlyn Reilley, Mindy S. Crandall, Jeffrey D. Kline, John B. Kim and Jaime de Diego
Fire 2023, 6(8), 300; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire6080300 - 04 Aug 2023
Viewed by 1813
Abstract
Historical land and fire management practices coupled with climate change and modern human development pressures are contributing to larger, more frequent, and more severe wildfires across Western U.S. forests. Human ignitions are the predominant cause of wildfire throughout the United States, necessitating wildfire [...] Read more.
Historical land and fire management practices coupled with climate change and modern human development pressures are contributing to larger, more frequent, and more severe wildfires across Western U.S. forests. Human ignitions are the predominant cause of wildfire throughout the United States, necessitating wildfire management strategies that consider both the causes of human ignitions and the factors that influence them. Using a dataset of over 104,000 ignitions from 1992 to 2018 for Oregon and Washington (U.S), we examine the major causes of wildfire ignitions and build regression models to evaluate the potential influence of both biophysical and socioeconomic factors on human and natural ignitions across distinct fire regimes west and east of the Cascade Range. Our results corroborate prior findings that socioeconomic factors such as income, employment, population density, and age demographics are significantly correlated with human ignitions. In the Pacific Northwest, we found that the importance of socioeconomic factors on human ignitions differs significantly between the west and east sides of the Cascade Range. We also found that most human ignitions are linked to escaped fires from recreation or debris and open burning activities, highlighting opportunities to tailor wildfire prevention efforts to better control higher risk activities and reduce accidental ignitions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Incorporating Fire in Social-Ecological Models)
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10 pages, 588 KiB  
Article
Firefighter Stress, Anxiety, and Diminished Compliance-Oriented Safety Behaviors: Consequences of Passive Safety Leadership in the Fire Service?
by Todd D. Smith, Mari-Amanda Dyal and David M. DeJoy
Fire 2023, 6(6), 241; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire6060241 - 18 Jun 2023
Viewed by 1482
Abstract
Safety-specific passive leadership has been negatively linked to diminished safety outcomes, including safety behaviors. However, this relationship is not fully understood. Research has not fully examined mediating factors that may be influenced by passive leadership, which then influence safety behaviors. Research among firefighters [...] Read more.
Safety-specific passive leadership has been negatively linked to diminished safety outcomes, including safety behaviors. However, this relationship is not fully understood. Research has not fully examined mediating factors that may be influenced by passive leadership, which then influence safety behaviors. Research among firefighters in this context is particularly absent. As such, this study aimed to examine relationships between safety-specific passive leadership, stress, anxiety, and compliance-oriented safety behavior outcomes among 708 professional firefighters. A path analysis was completed. The hypothesized model fit was very good and hypothesized relationships were confirmed. Safety-specific passive leadership was positively, significantly associated with increased firefighter stress perceptions and stress was positively, significantly associated with anxiety. Anxiety was negatively, significantly associated with both safety compliance and personal protective equipment behavior. This study has implications for researchers and practitioners. The findings emphasize the importance of active leaders in the fire service as passive leadership in the context of safety is distressing, which results in anxiety and ultimately diminished safety behavior outcomes, which could place firefighters at risk for injuries, illness, or death. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Incorporating Fire in Social-Ecological Models)
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21 pages, 3213 KiB  
Article
Probabilistic Wildfire Risk Assessment and Modernization Transitions: The Case of Greece
by Andreas Y. Troumbis, Cleo Maria Gaganis and Haralambos Sideropoulos
Fire 2023, 6(4), 158; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire6040158 - 14 Apr 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2566
Abstract
Wildfire is the primary cause of deforestation in fire-prone environments, disrupting the forest transition process generated by multiple social-ecological drivers of modernization. Given the positive feedback between climate change and wildfire-driven deforestation, it seems necessary to abstract the primary- or micro-characteristics of wildfire [...] Read more.
Wildfire is the primary cause of deforestation in fire-prone environments, disrupting the forest transition process generated by multiple social-ecological drivers of modernization. Given the positive feedback between climate change and wildfire-driven deforestation, it seems necessary to abstract the primary- or micro-characteristics of wildfire event(s) and focus on the general behavior of the phenomenon across time and space. This paper intends to couple wildfire self-organizing criticality theory (SOC) and modernization statistics to propose a verisimilar explanation of the phenomenon’s evolution in the past decades and a prediction of its trends in Greece. We use power law distributions of the fire frequency–magnitude relationship to estimate the basic SOC parameters and the Weibull reliability method to calculate large-size wildfires’ conditional probability as a time function. We use automatic linear modeling to search for the most accurate relationship between wildfire metrics and the best subset of modernization predictors. The discussion concentrates on reframing the political debate on fire prevention vs. suppression, its flaws and limitations, and the core challenges for adopting more efficient wildfire management policies in Greece. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Incorporating Fire in Social-Ecological Models)
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23 pages, 10636 KiB  
Article
Optimizing Fuel Treatments Allocation to Protect the Wildland–Urban Interface from Large-Scale Wildfires in Greece
by Margarita Bachantourian, Kostas Kalabokidis, Palaiologos Palaiologou and Kyriakos Chaleplis
Fire 2023, 6(2), 75; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire6020075 - 18 Feb 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1873
Abstract
A crucial risk governance priority of the Greek forest managers is to reduce damages in the wildland–urban interface (WUI) by controlling wildfire behavior through fuel management practices. To support decisions for where management should be applied and how, this study experimented with new [...] Read more.
A crucial risk governance priority of the Greek forest managers is to reduce damages in the wildland–urban interface (WUI) by controlling wildfire behavior through fuel management practices. To support decisions for where management should be applied and how, this study experimented with new methods for fuel treatments allocation over a typical Mediterranean fire-prone landscape in the peninsula of Kassandra (an area of 350 km2), northern Greece. The Minimum Travel Time (MTT) fire simulation algorithm and the Treatment Optimization Model were used to produce eight spatial exclusionary and non-exclusionary datasets that were used as criteria for the spatial optimization of fuel management interventions. We used the Multicriteria Decisions Analysis method with Geographical Information Systems to cartographically intersect the criteria to produce two priority maps for two forest management scenarios (i.e., a control and a realistic one). The results revealed that 48 km2 of the study area was characterized as high-priority locations in the control scenario (i.e., with equally weighted management priorities), while 60 km2 was assigned to the high-priority class in the realistic scenario (i.e., with different weighted management priorities). Further analysis showed a substantial variation in treatment priority among the four major forest land cover types (broadleaves, sparse Mediterranean shrublands, conifers, and dense Mediterranean shrublands), revealing that the latter two had the highest selection values. Our methodological framework has already been operationally used by the Greek Forest Service branch of Kassandra to decide the most effective landscape fuel treatment allocation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Incorporating Fire in Social-Ecological Models)
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16 pages, 8208 KiB  
Article
Small-Scale Analysis of Characteristics of the Wildland–Urban Interface Area of Thessaloniki, Northern Greece
by Petros Ganatsas, Nikolaos Oikonomakis and Marianthi Tsakaldimi
Fire 2022, 5(5), 159; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire5050159 - 01 Oct 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2341
Abstract
In the past few years, the continuous expansion of urban development has created mixed forested, agricultural, and urban areas. These areas are called the wildland–urban interface (WUI), and they are characterized by increased human activities and land-use conversion, and they usually contribute to [...] Read more.
In the past few years, the continuous expansion of urban development has created mixed forested, agricultural, and urban areas. These areas are called the wildland–urban interface (WUI), and they are characterized by increased human activities and land-use conversion, and they usually contribute to a high risk of wildfire occurrence. In the case of the peri-urban areas of Thessaloniki city, an effort was made to map, classify, and describe this wildland–urban interface, using Sentinel-2 satellite images of the area and very large scale orthophotos (VLSO) for the human settlements. Object-based image analysis (OBIA) was applied to classify landcover, combined with analysis of field data. The results showed that the WUI area in the city of Thessaloniki appears to the north and east of the city and covers an area of 2203.98 ha. The main characteristics affected by the ecological conditions of this area are the building (or human infrastructure) density, type, and the structure of forest vegetation. Human population pressure was found to be greatly differentiated between WUI areas belonging to different municipalities, the most affected was the municipality of Thessaloniki. A set of fire prevention silvicultural treatments are suggested for mitigating the fire danger in the area, accompanied by appropriate human awareness actions and the involvement of the local society. These measures include the reduction in crown bulk density and increase in crown base height through pruning (at least to 1/3 of total tree height), and low thinning, aiming to ensure that tree crowns of mature Pinus brutia trees are not in contact with one another. Both in the young P. brutia forest and the evergreen vegetation areas, thinning, pruning, and vegetation clearing is recommended adjusted according to each ecosystem. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Incorporating Fire in Social-Ecological Models)
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