The human impact on mediterranean fire regims

Résumé

Humans have influenced fire regimes in the Mediterranean for thousands of years through increased ignition frequency, fire suppression and fuel fragmentation. In this PhD-thesis we asses the impact of climate change, fire prevention and land use changes on the fire regimes of three Mediterranean areas in Catalonia. Thereto we use novel GIS techniques and a specifically developed fire regime model named FIRE LADY. We show that the interaction between fire regime and landscape structure creates both positive and negative feedbacks, the existence of a climatic threshold above which catastrophic fires can occur and that the restoration of the traditional rural mosaic is an efficient way of fire prevention.