Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
https://hdl.handle.net/10316/107597
Title: | Defining Extreme Wildfire Events: Difficulties, Challenges, and Impacts | Authors: | Tedim, Fantina Leone, Vittorio Amraoui, Malik Bouillon, Christophe Coughlan, Michael Delogu, Giuseppe Fernandes, Paulo Ferreira, Carmen McCaffrey, Sarah McGee, Tara Parente, Joana Paton, Douglas Pereira, Mário Ribeiro, Luís M. Viegas, Domingos Xavier Xanthopoulos, Gavriil |
Keywords: | control capacity; disaster; extreme wildfire event (EWE); large fire; megafire; social-ecological; transdisciplinary | Issue Date: | 2018 | Publisher: | MDPI | Project: | project FIREXTR- Prevent and prepare society for extreme fire events: the challenge of seeing the “forest” and not just the “trees" (FCT Ref:PTDC/ATPGEO/0462/2014 | Serial title, monograph or event: | Fire | Volume: | 1 | Issue: | 1 | Abstract: | Every year worldwide some extraordinary wildfires occur, overwhelming suppression capabilities, causing substantial damages, and often resulting in fatalities. Given their increasing frequency, there is a debate about how to address these wildfires with significant social impacts, but there is no agreement upon terminology to describe them. The concept of extreme wildfire event (EWE) has emerged to bring some coherence on this kind of events. It is increasingly used, often as a synonym of other terms related to wildfires of high intensity and size, but its definition remains elusive. The goal of this paper is to go beyond drawing on distinct disciplinary perspectives to develop a holistic view of EWE as a social-ecological phenomenon. Based on literature review and using a transdisciplinary approach, this paper proposes a definition of EWE as a process and an outcome. Considering the lack of a consistent “scale of gravity” to leverage extreme wildfire events such as in natural hazards (e.g., tornados, hurricanes and earthquakes) we present a proposal of wildfire classification with seven categories based on measurable fire spread and behavior parameters and suppression difficulty. The categories 5 to 7 are labeled as EWE. | URI: | https://hdl.handle.net/10316/107597 | ISSN: | 2571-6255 | DOI: | 10.3390/fire1010009 | Rights: | openAccess |
Appears in Collections: | I&D ADAI - Artigos em Revistas Internacionais |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Defining-extreme-wildfire-events-Difficulties-challenges-and-impactsFire.pdf | 852.48 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
SCOPUSTM
Citations
262
checked on Aug 19, 2024
WEB OF SCIENCETM
Citations
245
checked on Aug 2, 2024
Page view(s)
171
checked on Aug 27, 2024
Download(s)
59
checked on Aug 27, 2024
Google ScholarTM
Check
Altmetric
Altmetric
This item is licensed under a Creative Commons License