IFI: applications at local and regional scale in the Euro-Mediterranean area

Europe, especially in the Southern part, heavily experiences wildland fires. About 60,000 fires occur every year on average, burning more than 600,000 ha (EEA, 2003; JRC, 2007), and aside the statistical effects, there are more fires than a century ago (Moreno et al., 1998; Mouillot et al., 2005; Mouillot and Field, 2005). In these areas, the ignition is mainly assignable to humans (voluntary or involuntary actions), but fires seems to be governed by weather and climate (Piñol et al., 1998; Pausas 2004; Pereira et al., 2005); also vegetation plays a fundamental role. Basing on this context, it is crucial the role of fire danger assessment, also in order to efficiently distribute the fire-fighting resources and, in general, to optimize the fire planning and management. There are several and heterogeneous definitions of fire danger. Following the definition of Chuvieco et al. (2003), and Bachman and Allgöwer (1998), fire danger can be defined as -the probability of a fire happens and its consequences?. Estimating fire danger is obtained by the identification of potentially contributing variables and integrating them into a mathematical expression, i.e. an index. IFI (Integrated Fire Index) is a fire danger index originally developed for Sardinia, Italy. The general index structure includes four codes: 1) Drought Code (DC) linked to water status of plants; 2) Meteo Code (MC) related to turbulence and weather conditions; 3) Fuel Code (FC) which takes into account fuel characteristics and moisture; 4) Topological Code (TC) which considers slope and aspect of the study area. IFI is operatively used in Sardinia by the Regional Forestry Corp as tool to forecast fire danger using daily weather forecast. In Proterina C, an improved version of IFI was developed and tested. In this presentation, an overview of the IFI applications is showed both at local and regional scales. At local scale, IFI was tested for several years in Sardinia (Italy) and showed good performances in order to predict fire occurrence and burnt areas. At regional scale, IFI also showed good skills, in conjunction to the Seasonal climatic Prediction System of CMCC (Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Climate Change), to predict the seasonal fire danger in the EuroMediterranean area.