The wildfires of summer 2021 in Greece were among the most severe forest
fire events that have occurred in the country over the past decade. The
conflagration period lasted for 20 days (i.e., from 27 July to 16 August
2021) and resulted in the devastation of an area of more than 3600
Km(2). Forest fire events of similar severity also struck other
Mediterranean countries during this period. Apart from their direct
impacts, forest fires also render an area more susceptible to runoff
erosion by massively removing its vegetation, among other factors. It is
clear that immediately after a forest fire, most areas are much more
susceptible to erosion. In this paper, we evaluate the erosion hazard of
Attica, Northern Euboea, and the Peloponnese that were devastated by
forest fires during the summer of 2021 in Greece, in comparison with
their geological and geomorphological structures, as well as land cover
and management. Given that a very significant part of these areas were
burnt during the major conflagrations of this summer, erosion risk, as
well as flood risk, are expected to be very high, especially for the
coming autumn and winter. For the evaluation of erosion risk, the burnt
areas were mapped, and the final erosion-risk maps were constructed
through GIS software. The final maps suggest that most of the burnt
areas are highly susceptible to future surface runoff erosion events