IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecomod/v205y2007i3p336-342.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Scaling properties in forest fire sequences: The human role in the order of nature

Author

Listed:
  • Benavent-Corai, J.
  • Rojo, C.
  • Suárez-Torres, J.
  • Velasco-García, L.

Abstract

Since the 1990s, forest-fire models focused on self-organized criticality behaviour on both spatial and temporal scales. Recent related studies have suggested that the spatial fractality of wildfires is due to the heterogeneous distribution of forest mass (frequency–size distribution fitted to a power-law). However, the differences observed between real data and simulated data, due to the multiplicity of interacting factors, many of them unknown, remain unclear. As the great majority of forest fires are caused by humans, in the present work, we have studied spatial and temporal distributions of forest-fire sequences detected in the eastern part of Spain, depending on the wildfire origin. We showed how humans modify spatial and temporal scale invariant properties, playing a role in the order of nature. This human impact, especially, has important implications: decreasing the inter-event interval and increasing the “sparking frequency” on forest-fire modelling.

Suggested Citation

  • Benavent-Corai, J. & Rojo, C. & Suárez-Torres, J. & Velasco-García, L., 2007. "Scaling properties in forest fire sequences: The human role in the order of nature," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 205(3), pages 336-342.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:205:y:2007:i:3:p:336-342
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2007.02.028
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380007001019
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2007.02.028?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Albano, Ezequiel V., 1995. "Spreading analysis and finite-size scaling study of the critical behavior of a forest fire model with immune trees," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 216(3), pages 213-226.
    2. Drossel, B. & Schwabl, F., 1992. "Self-organized criticality in a forest-fire model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 191(1), pages 47-50.
    3. Amatulli, Giuseppe & Peréz-Cabello, Fernando & de la Riva, Juan, 2007. "Mapping lightning/human-caused wildfires occurrence under ignition point location uncertainty," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 200(3), pages 321-333.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Peng, Dan & Han, Xiao-Pu & Wei, Zong-Wen & Wang, Bing-Hong, 2015. "Punctuated equilibrium dynamics in human communications," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 436(C), pages 36-44.
    2. Telesca, Luciano & Song, Weiguo, 2011. "Time-scaling properties of city fires," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 44(7), pages 558-568.
    3. Ilaria Zambon & Artemi Cerdà & Pavel Cudlin & Pere Serra & Silvia Pili & Luca Salvati, 2019. "Road Network and the Spatial Distribution of Wildfires in the Valencian Community (1993–2015)," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 9(5), pages 1-15, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lin, Jianyi & Rinaldi, Sergio, 2009. "A derivation of the statistical characteristics of forest fires," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 220(7), pages 898-903.
    2. Kuter, Semih & Usul, Nurunnisa & Kuter, Nazan, 2011. "Bandwidth determination for kernel density analysis of wildfire events at forest sub-district scale," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 222(17), pages 3033-3040.
    3. Zinck, Richard D. & Johst, Karin & Grimm, Volker, 2010. "Wildfire, landscape diversity and the Drossel–Schwabl model," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 221(1), pages 98-105.
    4. Macpherson, K.P. & MacKinnon, A.L., 1997. "One-dimensional percolation models of transient phenomena," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 243(1), pages 1-13.
    5. de Benicio, Rosilda B. & Stošić, Tatijana & de Figueirêdo, P.H. & Stošić, Borko D., 2013. "Multifractal behavior of wild-land and forest fire time series in Brazil," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(24), pages 6367-6374.
    6. Satulovsky, Javier E., 1997. "On the synchronizing mechanism of a class of cellular automata," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 237(1), pages 52-58.
    7. Kondor, Dániel & Mátray, Péter & Csabai, István & Vattay, Gábor, 2013. "Measuring the dimension of partially embedded networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(18), pages 4160-4171.
    8. James Gaboardi, 2020. "Validating Abstract Representations of Spatial Population Data while considering Disclosure Avoidance," Working Papers 20-5, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    9. Bill McKelvey & Benyamin B. Lichtenstein & Pierpaolo Andriani, 2012. "When organisations and ecosystems interact: toward a law of requisite fractality in firms," International Journal of Complexity in Leadership and Management, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 2(1/2), pages 104-136.
    10. Batac, Rene & Longjas, Anthony & Monterola, Christopher, 2012. "Statistical distributions of avalanche size and waiting times in an inter-sandpile cascade model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(3), pages 616-624.
    11. Peyrard, N. & Dieckmann, U. & Franc, A., 2008. "Long-range correlations improve understanding of the influence of network structure on contact dynamics," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 383-394.
    12. Marzouk, Cyril, 2016. "Fires on large recursive trees," Stochastic Processes and their Applications, Elsevier, vol. 126(1), pages 265-289.
    13. Ruskin, H.J. & Feng, Y., 1997. "Self-organised criticality in some dissipative sandpile models," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 245(3), pages 453-460.
    14. LaViolette, Randall A. & Glass, Kristin & Colbaugh, Richard, 2009. "Deep information from limited observation of robust yet fragile systems," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 388(17), pages 3283-3287.
    15. Feliu Serra-Burriel & Pedro Delicado & Fernando M. Cucchietti, 2021. "Wildfires Vegetation Recovery through Satellite Remote Sensing and Functional Data Analysis," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(11), pages 1-22, June.
    16. Ghafar Salavati & Ebrahim Saniei & Ebrahim Ghaderpour & Quazi K. Hassan, 2022. "Wildfire Risk Forecasting Using Weights of Evidence and Statistical Index Models," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-15, March.
    17. José Ramón González‐Olabarria & Blas Mola‐Yudego & Lluis Coll, 2015. "Different Factors for Different Causes: Analysis of the Spatial Aggregations of Fire Ignitions in Catalonia (Spain)," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 35(7), pages 1197-1209, July.
    18. Honecker, A. & Peschel, I., 1997. "Length scales and power laws in the two-dimensional forest-fire model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 239(4), pages 509-530.
    19. Wang, Jian & Song, Weiguo & Zheng, Hongyang & Telesca, Luciano, 2010. "Temporal scaling behavior of human-caused fires and their connection to relative humidity of the atmosphere," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 221(1), pages 85-89.
    20. Tang, Da-Hai & Han, Xiao-Pu & Wang, Bing-Hong, 2010. "Stretched exponential distribution of recurrent time of wars in China," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(13), pages 2637-2641.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:205:y:2007:i:3:p:336-342. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/ecological-modelling .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.