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A. Altamirano et al. 2010. Human-caused forest fire in Mediterranean ecosystems of Chile
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Human-caused forest fire in Mediterranean ecosystems of Chile:
modelling landscape spatial patterns on forest fire occurrence
Adison Altamirano 1* , Christian Salas 1,2 & Valeska Yaitul 2
1 Departamento de Ciencias Forestales, Universidad de La Frontera, Temuco, Chile
2 School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, USA
Abstract
Modelling forest fire occurrence has been lacked for the southern hemisphere, in particular for
Chilean ecosystems. We developed models to investigate the relationship between forest fire
occurrence and landscape heterogeneity in Mediterranean ecosystems of Chile. We used
georreferenced forest fires data from 2004 to 2008. Our data of spatial heterogeneity were
obtained at multiple spatial scales, including climatic, topographic, human-related, and landcover
variables. We fit a logistic model in order to predict forest fire occurrence as a function of
our potential predictor variables. Our best model suggests that the probability of forest fires
occurrence is related to high both temperature and precipitation, and lower distance to cities.
Our predictions suggest that 46% of the study area has high probability of forest fires
occurrence. Our findings can help to take adequate decisions regarding land planning.
Keywords: Disturbance, logistic regression, remote sensing, land planning.
1. Introduction
Fire disturbance is recognized as an important problem because it can devastate natural
resources, human property, and threaten human lives (Cardille et al. 2001; Gustafson et al.
2004; González et al. 2005; Ryu et al. 2007). Forest fires result in enormous economic losses
because they affect environmental, recreational, and amenity values as well as consume timber,
degrade real estate, and generate high cost of suppression (Yadav and Kaushik 2007).
Modelling forest fire occurrence (i.e., where and when a forest fire starts) has recently been
conducted in the northern hemisphere (Calef et al. 2008; Lozano et al. 2007; Ryu et al. 2007;
Vega-Garcia and Chuvieco 2006), however, efforts on the subject are lacking for the southern
hemisphere, in particular for Chilean ecosystems. Some studies in Chile have focused in postfire
effects on vegetation dynamics (Navarro et al. 2008; Litton and Santelices 2003), but
studies on predicting forest fires occurrence are lacking. Forest fire occurrence has increased in
the last years in Chile, being the mean frequency about five thousand forest fires per year. These
fires have affected a mean area of about 500 km2 per year (Navarro et al. 2008; CONAF 2009)
being the human activity the main cause of fire ignition (CONAF 2009). We developed models
to investigate the relationship between forest fire occurrence and landscape heterogeneity in
Mediterranean ecosystems of Chile.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +56 45 325658 - Fax: +56 45 325634
Email address: aaltamiranofro.cl
Forest Landscapes and Global Change-New Frontiers in Management, Conservation and Restoration. Proceedings of the IUFRO Landscape Ecology
Working Group International Conference, September 21-27, 2010, Bragança, Portugal. J.C. Azevedo, M. Feliciano, J. Castro & M.A. Pinto (eds.)
2010, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Bragança, Portugal.