Characterizing and tackling the singularity of Pyrenees fire regime

Session: Fire impacts and lessons learnt

Presenter: Jordi Oliveres (SUMMLab, UPC, Bombers de la Generalitat de Catalunya)

Contact email: jordi.holi@gmail.com

Bombers de la Generalitat de Catalunya is the public emergency management  organization of Catalonia (Fire and Rescue Services). On the other hand, SUMMLab (Sustainability Measurement and Modeling Lab) is a transdisciplinar research department linked to the Institute for Sustainability Science and Technology at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.

Link: http://interior.gencat.cat/ca/el_departament/publicacions/bombers/

ABSTRACT: Wildfire regime phenomena and theoretical physics have had an important relation in the last twenty years both in terms of fire regime characterization and the assessment of the complex interactions existing between social and ecological systems (Malamud et al. 2005, Y.Jiang et al. 2010). In this paper, which relays on this same relation, we present a statistical analysis of 30 year wildfire data for the Pyrenees area with the objective to characterize the heavy tailed distributions (Alstott 2014, Clauset et al. 2009) of burned areas as statistical signature for different fire regimes.

Firstly, we have analyzed burned areas probability distributions using official empirical data available in Catalonia for all predetermined Homogeneous Fire Regime Zones, HFRZ (Castellnou et al. 2009). Secondly, we have obtained  an aggregate of different HFRZ to create several data sets for what we defined as Pyrenees region. These data sets, specifically frequency-area distributions, have been characterized from different time-space scales in order to get a finer understanding of the observed probability (usually heavy-tailed) distributions.

Our results, together with the current understanding and situation of the Pyrenees landscapes in terms of contagious disturbances (D. Mckenzy et al, 2013) are discussed from a transdisciplinary approach (climate science, pyroecology and emergency management organization knowledge).
Finally, we show an example of transdisciplinary research being carried at a community scale in a valley of the Pyrenees, showing the potentials of that approach and the scientific gaps.