Incendi ed ecosistemi mediterranei: valutazione degli impatti in regime di cambiamento climatico

In Europa, in particolare nella parte meridionale, ogni anno si registrano mediamente 60.000 incendi, con una superficie complessiva percorsa dal fuoco di circa 600.000 ettari. Negli ultimi anni si è sviluppato un interessante dibattito sui fattori che guidano il regime degli incendi in queste aree. Le ricerche più recenti, supportate dalla statistica, confermano il ruolo guida del clima e della meteorologia, strettamente condizionato dall’uso del suolo e con diverse caratteristiche a seconda della regione. In condizioni di cambiamenti climatici e socioeconomici, quali quelle attuali, è logico pensare che anche il regime degli incendi subisca importanti influenze, a seguito delle modifiche del clima e dell’uso del suolo

Co-design of sectoral climate services based on seasonal prediction information in the Mediterranean

We present in this contribution the varied experiences gathered in the co-design of a sectoral climate services collection, developed in the framework of the MEDSCOPE project, which have in common the application of seasonal predictions for the Mediterranean geographical and climatic region. Although the region is affected by low seasonal predictability limiting the skill of seasonal forecasting systems, which historically has hindered the development of downstream services, the project was originally conceived to exploit windows of opportunity with enhanced skill for developing and evaluating climate services in various sectors with high societal impact in the region: renewable energy, hydrology, and agriculture and forestry. The project also served as the scientific branch of the WMO-led Mediterranean Climate Outlook Forum (MedCOF) that had as objective -among others- partnership strengthening on climate services between providers and users within the Mediterranean region. The diversity of the MEDSCOPE experiences in co-designing shows the wide range of involvement and engagement of users in this process across the Mediterranean region, which benefits from the existing solid and organized MedCOF community of climate services providers and users. A common issue among the services described here -and also among other prototypes developed in the project- was related with the communication of forecasts uncertainty and skill for efficiently informing decision-making in practice. All MEDSCOPE project prototypes make use of an internally developed software package containing process-based methods for synthesising seasonal forecast data, as well as basic and advanced tools for obtaining tailored products. Another challenge assumed by the project refers to the demonstration of the economic, social, and environmental value of predictions provided by these MEDSCOPE prototypes.The work described in this paper has received funding from the MEDSCOPE project co-funded by the European Commission as part of ERA4CS, an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate, grant agreement 690462

Investigating the Climate-Related Risk of Forest Fires for Mediterranean Islands’ Blue Economy

The Mediterranean islands’ blue economy and, more specifically, the tourism sector, largely regulate Europe’s gross product. Climate change threatens the ecological, societal, and economic sustainability of the islands in many ways, with increasing wildfires making up one of the most critical components of the climate change impacts on tourism. Here, we aim to identify and assess forest fire vulnerability and risk due to climate change for seven Mediterranean islands through the application of the “impact chain” conceptual framework. The backbone of this approach requires the integration of quantitative and qualitative data according to the three main risk components sensu the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), i.e., hazard, exposure, and vulnerability, with a structured participatory approach involving stakeholders and experts. Our results illustrate the islands with high potential for improvement in terms of adapting capacity and, by indicating the contribution of the different risk components, highlight the main environmental and socio-economic elements that affect the islands’ vulnerability and risk under climate change. The approach’s potentials and constraints are discussed, suggesting that the method can be handily used to point out the priorities that must be addressed by mitigation and adaptation policies and measures at the island level

Predicting and Mapping Potential Fire Severity for Risk Analysis at Regional Level Using Google Earth Engine

Despite being a natural ecological process, wildfires are dramatic events that, accelerated by global change, could negatively affect ecosystem services depending on their severity level. However, because of data processing constraints, fire severity has been mostly neglected in risk analysis (especially at regional levels). Indeed, previous studies addressing fire severity focused mainly on analyzing single fire events, preventing the projection of the results over large areas. Although, building and projecting robust models of fire severity to integrate into risk analysis is of main importance to best anticipate decisions. Here, taking advantage of free data-processing platforms, such as Google Earth Engine, we use more than 1000 fire records from Western Italy and Southern France in the years 2004–2017, to assess the performance of random forest models predicting the relativized delta normalized burn ratio (rdNBR) used as proxy of fire severity. Furthermore, we explore the explanatory capacity and meaning of several variables related to topography, vegetation, and burning conditions. To show the potentialities of this approach for operational purposes, we projected the model for one of the regions (Sardinia) within the study area. Results showed that machine learning algorithms explain up to 75% of the variability in rdNBR, with variables related to vegetation amount and topography being the most important. These results highlight the potential usefulness of these tools for mapping fire severity in risk assessments

Adaptation to Climate Change Across Local Policies: An Investigation in Six Italian Cities

Climate change is a concerning phenomenon worldwide. The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is the core of the mitigation strategies that are effective countermeasures to address a changing climate in the long term. Nevertheless, the need for short-term solutions regarding adaptation to climate change (ACC) has gained growing interest in the scientific community and in European institutions. European and national ACC principles are being integrated in strategies and plans. In Italy, some regions have adopted ACC principles in strategic plans, which influence the whole local planning system and persuade local communities to become more climate-resilient. This study focuses on the mainstreaming of ACC into strategies, plans, programs, and projects (SPPPs) adopted by the following Italian cities: Bologna, Milan, Naples, Rome, Turin, and Venice. We scrutinize the contents of SPPPs with respect to four criteria: (i) references to strategies or plans for ACC; (ii) inclusion of ACC objectives and (iii) measures; and (iv) references to—or the inclusion of—climatic analysis on historical series and/or future projections. We found out that most SPPPs adopted by the cities have considered ACC in a promising way, i.e., all the cities are inclined to promote ACC, despite three of them lacking a municipal ACC strategy or plan and a National Adaptation Plan not being in force

Adaptation to Climate Change Across Local Policies: An Investigation in Six Italian Cities

Climate change is a concerning phenomenon worldwide. The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is the core of the mitigation strategies that are effective countermeasures to address a changing climate in the long term. Nevertheless, the need for short-term solutions regarding adaptation to climate change (ACC) has gained growing interest in the scientific community and in European institutions. European and national ACC principles are being integrated in strategies and plans. In Italy, some regions have adopted ACC principles in strategic plans, which influence the whole local planning system and persuade local communities to become more climate-resilient. This study focuses on the mainstreaming of ACC into strategies, plans, programs, and projects (SPPPs) adopted by the following Italian cities: Bologna, Milan, Naples, Rome, Turin, and Venice. We scrutinize the contents of SPPPs with respect to four criteria: (i) references to strategies or plans for ACC; (ii) inclusion of ACC objectives and (iii) measures; and (iv) references to—or the inclusion of—climatic analysis on historical series and/or future projections. We found out that most SPPPs adopted by the cities have considered ACC in a promising way, i.e., all the cities are inclined to promote ACC, despite three of them lacking a municipal ACC strategy or plan and a National Adaptation Plan not being in force

Extreme wildfire spread and behaviour: case studies from North Sardinia, Italy

Worldwide, fire seasons are usually characterized by the occurrence of one or more days with extreme environmental conditions, such as heat waves associated with strong winds. On these days, fires can quickly get out of hand originating large and severe wildfires. In these cases, containment and extinguishment phases are critical, considering that the imperative goal is to keep fire crews, people and animals safe. In this work we will present a set of large and severe wildfires occurred with extreme environmental conditions in the northern area of Sardinia. The most recent wildfire we will describe was ignited on July 13, 2011 in the Oschiri municipality (4043’ N; 906’ E), and burned about 2,500 ha of wooded and herbaceous pastures and oakwoods in few hours. The second wildfire we will present was ignited on July 23, 2009 in the Bonorva municipality (4025’ N; 8 46’ E), and was responsible for the death of two people and several damages to houses, animals and farms. This wildfire lasted on July 25, and burned about 10,000 ha of wooded and herbaceous pastures; the most of the area was burned during the first day. The last wildfire we will describe was ignited on July 23, 2007 in the Oniferi municipality (4016’ N; 9 16’ E) and burned about 9,000 ha of wooded and herbaceous pastures and oakwoods; about 8,000 ha were burned after 11 hours of propagation. All these wildfires were ignited in days characterized by very hot temperatures associated to the effect of air masses moving from inland North Africa to the Mediterranean Basin, and strong winds from west-south west. This is one of the typical weather pattern associated with large and severe wildfires in North Sardinia, and is well documented in the last years. Weather conditions, fuels and topography factors related to each case study will be accurately analyzed. Moreover, a detailed overview of observed fire spread and behavior and post-fire vegetation recovery will be presented. The fire spread and behavior data collected during the events will be also compared with the results obtained with FARSITE (Finney, 1994) and FLAMMAP (Finney, 2003) models. The main goal of this paper is to thoroughly describe the fire behavior of relevant and recent case studies, in order to learn from it and lessen the chance of making potential mistakes or hazardous firefighting operations in the same environmental conditions. Furthermore, a crucial point is to teach and prepare people and fire crews not to be surprised by severe or abrupt fire behavior under extreme environmental conditions. For these reasons, the combination of analysis, knowledge and awareness of historical case studies, field experience and computer modeling represent a key learning technique

The OFIDIA Fire Danger Rating System

Prevention is one of the most important stages in wildfire and other natural hazard management. Fire Danger Rating Systems (FDRSs) have been adopted by many countries to enhance wildfire prevention and suppression planning. With the aim to provide real-Time fire danger forecasts and finer-scale fire behaviour analysis, an operational fire danger prevention platform has been developed within the OFIDIA project (Operational FIre Danger preventIon plAtform). The OFIDIA Fire Danger Rating System platform consists of (1) a data archive for managing weather forecasting and wireless sensors data, (2) a data analytics platform for post-processing weather data and for computing fire danger indices, and (3) a web application system for the visualization of weather and fire index maps and related timeseries. The OFIDIA platform is also connected to a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) that gathers data from several sites in the Apulia (Italy) and Epirus (Greece) regions. The WSN is made by a primary station and several wireless sensors dislocated in wooded areas, the data acquisition process relates to variables like air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, precipitation, solar radiation, and fuel moisture

Fuel type characterization and potential fire behavior estimation in Sardinia and Corsica islands

Wildland fires represent a serious threat to forests and wooded areas of the Mediterranean Basin. As recorded by the European Commission (2009), during the last decade Southern Countries have experienced an annual average of about 50,000 forest fires and about 470,000 burned hectares. The factor that can be directly manipulated in order to minimize fire intensity and reduce other fire impacts, such as three mortality, smoke emission, and soil erosion, is wildland fuel. Fuel characteristics, such as vegetation cover, type, humidity status, and biomass and necromass loading are critical variables in affecting wildland fire occurrence, contributing to the spread, intensity, and severity of fires. Therefore, the availability of accurate fuel data at different spatial and temporal scales is needed for fire management applications, including fire behavior and danger prediction, fire fighting, fire effects simulation, and ecosystem simulation modeling. In this context, the main aims of our work are to describe the vegetation parameters involved in combustion processes and develop fire behavior fuel maps. The overall work plan is based firstly on the identification and description of the different fuel types mainly affected by fire occurrence in Sardinia (Italy) and Corsica (France) Islands, and secondly on the clusterization of the selected fuel types in relation to their potential fire behavior. In the first part of the work, the available time series of fire event perimeters and the land use map data were analyzed with the purpose of identifying the main land use types affected by fires. Thus, field sampling sites were randomly identified on the selected vegetation types and several fuel variables were collected (live and dead fuel load partitioned following Deeming et al., (1977), depth of fuel layer, plant cover, surface area-to-volume ratio, heat content). In the second part of the work, the potential fire behavior for every experimental site was simulated using BEHAVE fire behavior prediction system (Andrews, 1989) and experimental fuel data. Fire behavior was simulated by setting different weather scenarios representing the most frequent summer meteorological conditions. The simulation outputs (fireline intensity, rate of spread, flame length) were then analyzed for clustering the different fuel types in relation to their potential fire behavior. The results of this analysis can be used to produce fire behavior fuel maps that are important tools in evaluating fire hazard and risk for land management planning, locating and rating fuel treatments, and aiding in environmental assessments and fire danger programs modeling