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Wildland fires are becoming one of the most critical environmental factors affecting a wide range of ecosystems worldwide. In Mediterranean ecosystems (including also South-Africa, California, parts of Chile and Australia), wildland fires are recurrent phenomena every summer, following the seasonal drought. As a result of changes in traditional land use practices, and the impact of recent climate warming, fires have more negative impacts in the last years, threatening lives, socio-economic and ecological values. The book describes the ecological context of fires in the Mediterranean ecosystems, and provides methods to observe fire danger conditions and fire impacts using Earth Observation and Geographic Information System technologies.
List of contents
Foreword.- 1 Global impacts of fire.- 2 Eternal Flame: An Introduction to the Fire History of the Mediterranean.- 3 Fires and Landscape Conservation in Mediterranean Ecosystems.- 4 Mapping fire risk in Mediterranean Ecosystems of California: Vegetation type, Density, Invasive Species, and Fire Frequency.- 5 Fire Danger, Fire Detection, Quantification of Burned Areas and Description of Post-Fire Vegetation in the Central Area of Chile.- 6 Weather factors and fire danger in the Mediterranean.- 7 Estimation of fuel conditions for fire danger assessment.- 8 Impacts of Fire on Society: Extreme Fire Propagation Issues.- 9 Effects of fire on vegetation, soil and hydrogeomorphological behavior in Mediterranean ecosystems.- 10 Remote Sensing of Burn Severity.- 11 Human factors of fire occurrence in the Mediterranean.- 12 Forest fire emissions and air pollution in Southern Europe.- 13 Forest fires in the European Mediterranean region: Mapping and analysis of burned areas.- References.- Subject Index.
Summary
Wildland fires are becoming one of the most critical environmental factors affecting a wide range of ecosystems worldwide. In Mediterranean ecosystems (including also South-Africa, California, parts of Chile and Australia), wildland fires are recurrent phenomena every summer, following the seasonal drought. As a result of changes in traditional land use practices, and the impact of recent climate warming, fires have more negative impacts in the last years, threatening lives, socio-economic and ecological values. The book describes the ecological context of fires in the Mediterranean ecosystems, and provides methods to observe fire danger conditions and fire impacts using Earth Observation and Geographic Information System technologies.
