Recent trends in forest fires in Mediterranean areas and associated changes in fire regimes.

Understanding fire regimes is very important to assess the ecological effects of forest fires and project them under future scenarios. FUME project characterised fire regimes at different spatial scales and analysed trends and shifts in fire occurrence during the recent history. Overall, the results highlighted an inter-annual variability of fire activity, a general slight decreasing trend in burned area (with the exception of Portugal), and a shift in number of fires in several countries.
Such trends are likely due to a combined effect of extreme fire weather events, changes inpolicies and management practices, law enforcements and reporting systems.