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Modeling wildfire activity in Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) areas of Sardinia (Italy)

CARLA SCARPA , Mario Elia, Marina D'Este, Michele SALIS , Marcos Rodrigues , Bachisio Arca, Pierpaolo Duce, Maria Antonella Francesca Fiori, Grazia Pellizzaro

Abstract

Background. Wildfire frequency, magnitude and impacts in Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) areas are increasing in the Mediterranean Basin. Aims. We investigated the role played by socio-economic, vegetation, climatic and zootechnical drivers on WUI wildfire patterns (area burned and wildfire ignitions) in Sardinia (Italy). Methods. We defined WUI as the 100-m buffer area of the anthropic layers; we created a comprehensive and multi-year dataset of explanatory variables and wildfires. We trained a set of models and then evaluated their performances in predicting WUI fires. We used the best models to assess the single variable's importance and map wildfire patterns. Key results. Random Forest and Support Vector Machine were the most performing models. In broad terms, wildfire patterns at WUI were influenced by socio-economic factors and herbaceous vegetation types. Conclusions. Machine Learning models can be useful tools to predict wildfire ignitions and area burned at WUI in Mediterranean areas. Implications. Improved knowledge of the main drivers of wildfires at WUI in fire-prone Mediterranean areas can foster the development or optimization of wildfire risk reduction and prevention strategies.

WF24109  Accepted 23 November 2024

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