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Human dimensions of wildfires in NW Spain: causes, value of the burned vegetation and administrative measures

Exploring the human dimensions of forest fires is a crucial, although often overlooked, aspect of wildfire research, since wildfires often have important socio-economic impacts and humans are nowadays the main cause of wildfires in many areas of the world. We carried out a telephone survey (N = 345...

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Autores principales: Calviño-Cancela, María, Cañizo-Novelle, Nuria
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6163030/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30280032
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5657
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author Calviño-Cancela, María
Cañizo-Novelle, Nuria
author_facet Calviño-Cancela, María
Cañizo-Novelle, Nuria
author_sort Calviño-Cancela, María
collection PubMed
description Exploring the human dimensions of forest fires is a crucial, although often overlooked, aspect of wildfire research, since wildfires often have important socio-economic impacts and humans are nowadays the main cause of wildfires in many areas of the world. We carried out a telephone survey (N = 345 interviews) in one of the most fire-prone areas in Europe (NW Spain) in order to assess citizens’ awareness about wildfire causes and risks, their perception of the value of the vegetation and of administrative measures to fight against fires. Perceptions of respondents about fire causes were in general realistic although fires caused by pyromaniacs and for profit were overestimated, while vegetation management was comparatively underestimated. Citizens were broadly aware of the fire risk associated with different vegetation types, rightly considering native oak forests and agricultural fields as less risky than shrublands and pine and eucalypt plantations. Tree-dominated vegetation was more valued than treeless formations, and native forests more than tree plantations, which seems related to a preference for ecological value over utilitarian considerations. In addition, the value of eucalypt plantations was clearly affected by the education level of respondents, being less valued as the education level increased. Most citizens considered that the administration was not doing enough to fight against fires. The law that compels landowners to reduce fuels in wildland-urban interfaces was considered effective by most respondents (72%), but 50% considered it difficult to implement by landowners. This may explain the poor degree of compliance of this law.
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spelling pubmed-61630302018-10-02 Human dimensions of wildfires in NW Spain: causes, value of the burned vegetation and administrative measures Calviño-Cancela, María Cañizo-Novelle, Nuria PeerJ Natural Resource Management Exploring the human dimensions of forest fires is a crucial, although often overlooked, aspect of wildfire research, since wildfires often have important socio-economic impacts and humans are nowadays the main cause of wildfires in many areas of the world. We carried out a telephone survey (N = 345 interviews) in one of the most fire-prone areas in Europe (NW Spain) in order to assess citizens’ awareness about wildfire causes and risks, their perception of the value of the vegetation and of administrative measures to fight against fires. Perceptions of respondents about fire causes were in general realistic although fires caused by pyromaniacs and for profit were overestimated, while vegetation management was comparatively underestimated. Citizens were broadly aware of the fire risk associated with different vegetation types, rightly considering native oak forests and agricultural fields as less risky than shrublands and pine and eucalypt plantations. Tree-dominated vegetation was more valued than treeless formations, and native forests more than tree plantations, which seems related to a preference for ecological value over utilitarian considerations. In addition, the value of eucalypt plantations was clearly affected by the education level of respondents, being less valued as the education level increased. Most citizens considered that the administration was not doing enough to fight against fires. The law that compels landowners to reduce fuels in wildland-urban interfaces was considered effective by most respondents (72%), but 50% considered it difficult to implement by landowners. This may explain the poor degree of compliance of this law. PeerJ Inc. 2018-09-26 /pmc/articles/PMC6163030/ /pubmed/30280032 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5657 Text en ©2018 Calviño-Cancela and Cañizo-Novelle http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Natural Resource Management
Calviño-Cancela, María
Cañizo-Novelle, Nuria
Human dimensions of wildfires in NW Spain: causes, value of the burned vegetation and administrative measures
title Human dimensions of wildfires in NW Spain: causes, value of the burned vegetation and administrative measures
title_full Human dimensions of wildfires in NW Spain: causes, value of the burned vegetation and administrative measures
title_fullStr Human dimensions of wildfires in NW Spain: causes, value of the burned vegetation and administrative measures
title_full_unstemmed Human dimensions of wildfires in NW Spain: causes, value of the burned vegetation and administrative measures
title_short Human dimensions of wildfires in NW Spain: causes, value of the burned vegetation and administrative measures
title_sort human dimensions of wildfires in nw spain: causes, value of the burned vegetation and administrative measures
topic Natural Resource Management
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6163030/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30280032
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5657
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