Landscape change and fire hazard in a mountainous area in northeastern Portugal.
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abstract
Human abandonment in Mediterranean regions of Europe has led to vegetation encroachment
and landscape homogenization reducing biodiversity and favoring the occurrence of wild fires. In
Portugal, landscape changes driven by human abandonment were not observed until the late
twentieth century. The full extent of these recent changes and their economic, social and
ecological consequences, particularly by the creation of favorable conditions for the occurrence
of large wild fires, are just partially described and understood. Additionally, research on these
issues is urgently required to provide guidelines for future ecosystem and landscape planning and
management.
We studied land use and land cover over the last 50 years in the França Parish (Bragança,
North Eastern Portugal) to evaluate change in pattern and to infer on change in function,
particularly fire occurrence and propagation. We interpreted digitized and orthocorrected aerial
photographs from 1958, 1968, 1980, 1993, and 2005, based on the “Carta de Ocupação do Solo”
(Instituto Geográfico Português) land use/land cover system. Landscape structure for each of
these dates was described based upon landscape metrics calculated for major land cover classes.
Fire hazard was evaluated in terms of abundance and configuration of highly combustible cover
classes. We also used the FARSITE 4 software (Finney, 1998) to simulate fire propagation at the
landscape level based on land cover, terrain, and meteorological data.
