Climate changes, socioeconomic changes and land use: expert from all around the world and from different disciplines join their skills and their knowledges for fires analysis and prevention. In Alghero (from the 29th of November to the 1st of December, 2010) will take place the First International Meeting of FUME (Forest fires under climate, social and economic changes in Europe, the Mediterranean and other fire-affected areas of the world), the project that involves  33 groups of scientists, from 17 different countries and from 4 continents. The italian insititutions engaged in FUME are CMCC, UNISS, CNR-IBIMET, UNITUS.
FUME is a large-scale integrated projected funded by the EU under the 7th Framework Program. The Project starts from the understanding of the past and the study of  changes and factors that affected forest fire regimes, but it aims also to produce projections of climate change effects on  fires and to develop procedures to prevent fires and to evaluate economic costs.

The First FUME Project Meeting is organized by IAFENT (the CMCC’s division Impacts on Agriculture, Forest and Natural Ecosystems) and by DESA (Dipartimento di Economia e Sistemi Arborei at University of Sassari) .

For further information, please contact
CMCC and University of Sassari responsibles for the project:
Prof.ssa Donatella Spano – spano[at]uniss.it
Dr. Costantino Sirca – cosirca[at]uniss.it

Project Overview

Forest fires are a major concern in many countries in Europe, most notably in the South, in the Mediterranean Region, but also in Central and Northern Europe. Fires are also a major threat in the Northern African countries, and in the Eastern part of the Mediterranean. Forest fires are also a major concern in other Mediterranean-type areas of the World. Increased fire activity in many of these areas has been linked in the past to changes in land-use and land-cover due to the abandonment of the land and consequent socioeconomic changes. In the recent years, extreme fire episodes funneled by heat waves and drought have plagued southern European countries, as well as other fire-areas of the world. It is very likely that forest fires will continue increasing in the future as a result of continued socioeconomic changes, which include land-abandonment but also land occupation for recreational purposes, expanding the rural-urban interface. Climate change, by elevating temperatures and reducing precipitation, will add further risk. Furthermore, increasing climate (droughts) or weather (heat waves) extremes are additional threats that we need to be prepared for in the coming years and decades.

FUME is a large-scale integrated projected funded by the EU under the 7th Framework Program, for a period of 48 months (from 01/01/2010 to 31/12/2013) in which 33 groups of scientists, from 17 different countries and from 4 continents, will study the interactions between land-use and land-cover changes, socioeconomic changes and climate change.

FUME project is partitioned in 4 modules:
 Mod. 1 Understanding the past with the aim to document and evaluate which changes and factors affected in the past forest fire regimes;
Mod. 2 Projections of future with the aim to project the likely impacts on the vegetation that conform our landscapes and on fire regime, aided by the study of the past and the projections of future (XXI century, several time-slices) climate and other socioeconomic factors that could affect fire;
Mod. 3 Adapting to change to appraise current protocols and procedures for fire prevention, firefighting and the management of fire-prone areas to evaluate adaptive options to cope with them; to evaluate the economic costs and policies at the European level;
•    Mod. 4 Integration, knowledge transfer and management: : FUME will use large amounts of data. This requires building a common data base. Further, a network of sites will be organized for model testing and validation. Bridging the gap of knowledge transfer, particularly with managers, will be realized by training and specific actions with users

Special attention will be given to the projected increases in climate and weather extremes (drought, heat waves) since under such conditions fires become more devastating. FUME will produce, among other things, the most complete cartography of forest fires in Europe, and will identify the factors that were behind fires, particularly, large forest fires. Maps with future risk will also be produced as well as an evaluation of the vulnerability of the vegetation to the new conditions. Threats for regenerating ecosystems under climate extremes, particularly drought, will also be investigated. Training activities and close relationships with users are foreseen to keep research aligned to the actual needs, and procedures for quick transfer of knowledge to application by managers are also a main objective of this project

In particular, the objectives of Module 1 are to understand the interplay of the climate, land use and socio-economic factors, and their role in controlling fires and fire regime in order to have a reference period that integrates fire regime and their causes, socioeconomic and climatological factors, average and longer term conditions vs. extremes, as basis to project future changes. We need to know where fires occurred, when, what they burned and under what conditions, particularly the extreme ones. Therefore, we are mapping of fires throughout Europe and at various scales, and this is allowing us to establish the resources affected and how fires interacted with landscape elements (land-use/land cover types, distance to towns, roads, relation to time of abandonment, etc.). The relationships between fires and climatology is also matter of our studies.
Particular attention is devoted to identify the synoptic conditions conducive to large fires. In addition, to further understand the role of climate change, disentangling, to the extent possible, the role of climate and other factors in past fire activity is also a needed step to guide future adaptation.

The objectives of Module 2 are to produce scenarios of climate, socioeconomic drivers, including land-use/land cover, and vegetation relevant for predicting future impacts of fire. To do this, we are using existing scenarios, updated and adjusted to the requirements of fire. Based on these we will establish for Europe and the Mediterranean basin how such changes will directly affect fire climate-related danger conditions and shifts in fire regime. To this end various modeling frameworks and at various scales, from landscape level at certain sites to a European integration, are applied. Further, we will study how climate change and fire will affect the vegetation capacity to cope with fire. Modeling and field experiments aim at identifying future vulnerabilities. In FUME, a particular focus will be the impacts of extreme climatology on fire behavior, and ecosystem resilience. How extreme climatology and weather, particularly if any of the two occur during the regeneration phase after fire, can drastically modify vegetation structure and fuel characteristics.

The objectives of Module 3 are to appraise and develop protocols and approaches for fire prevention and fire planning capable of dealing with longer and more severe fire seasons and with new areas exposed to fire risk. In particular, the management of fires under most extreme conditions and under the pressure of other significant threats to humans, such as during heat waves and droughts and at the rural-urban interface is considered. Managing and restoring fire-prone landscapes, including new fire areas under the new changing conditions is investigated. Finally, the costs associated to the expected changes to cope with fire, the damages in some ecosystem services as a result of the new fire regime, and the revision of policies at European level in the light of future risks will also be researched.

To achieve these results, the availability and easy access of data by those involved is a crucial element. Furthermore, models need to be validated at sites where information from all sources is available. Module 4 is taking care of these needs: a “Sites Network” has been created, compiling all the available information (records of meteorological, vegetation, soil variables, socioeconomic) for a range of experimental sites across the Mediterranean region. The range of sites that has been proposed for the FUME project by the involved working teams across the Mediterranean region conforms the Sites Network of the project (Fig. 2). Among the study sites, Sardinia Island is a case study island, from a point of view both experimental and modelistic.
Additionally, training, knowledge transfer and outreach and dissemination are additional elements needed to be in place right from the beginning. Conditions are already changing, and policy makers and managers need to be informed from this initiative as early as possible. Again, Module 4 will address these issues.

1st Project meeting goals

During the 1st Meeting all the activities and steps forward carried out from the beginning of the project will be showed. In particular, we will focus on the advancing on compiling all the available information (records of meteorological, vegetation, soil variables, socioeconomic) for the range of experimental sites across the Mediterranean region. These information are fundamental, allowing us to document the recent past, such as the land use change along the last 30 years, and to determine how these changes affected past fire regime, considering also climate interactions.
Moreover, the development of the activities related to climate, land use and socio-economic change simulations will be deepen, focusing also on these change impacts on fire regime and risk. Additionally, a fundamental hot topic of the discussion will be the analysis of extreme climatic events.
Within the analysis of the firefighting protocols, CMCC and University of Sassari asked the cooperation with the Sardinian Forestry Corp (Corpo Forestale e di Vigilanza Ambientale of Sardinia) as official stakeholder. In particular, the cooperation refers to the involvements of the Forestry Corp within activities related to the evaluation of costs associated to the expected changes to cope with fire, the damages in some ecosystem services as a result of the new fire regime, and the revision of policies at European level in the light of future risks.

Read More

Fires and Climate change, a post from TeC – The Earth and Climate, the CMCC’s blog;

FUME Project page in CMCC’s research section;

download the FUME Project brossure (pdf)