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Studies dealing with wildland fire at global or continental scales normally use coarse-resolution spatial units, within which fire-regime components are aggregated for statistical purposes. Here, we developed the first European pyrogeography based on different fire-regime components to better capture the spatial heterogeneity of fire regimes. Pyroregions were delineated through the identification of similar distributions of fire-regime components computed from a remote sensing dataset over the period 2001–2018. We identified four large-scale pyroregions with different patterns of fire activity across the continent. The spatial mismatch between the pyrogeography and ecoregions suggests that other factors, besides vegetation-based classification systems, are driving fire regimes in Europe. Comparisons of interannual climate-fire relationships at different spatial aggregations presented stronger relationships (R2 = 0.65) at the pyroregion level (Figure 1). Overall, the developed pyrogeography provides a level of generalization that aids in understanding fire regimes and contributes to improving the performance of statistical models that predict future fire regimes. Therefore, pyroregions can also be understood as a tool for effective fire risk management and planning.
Cataloging Information
- Europe
- fire regimes
- FWI - Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System
- pyrogeography
- remote sensing
- spatial clustering