Developing Custom Fire Behavior Fuel Models for Mediterranean Wildland–Urban Interfaces in Southern Italy

The dramatic increase of fire hazard in wildland–
urban interfaces (WUIs) has required more detailed fuel
management programs to preserve ecosystem functions and
human settlements. Designing effective fuel treatment
strategies allows to achieve goals such as resilient landscapes,
fire-adapted communities, and ecosystem response.
Therefore, obtaining background information on forest fuel
parameters and fuel accumulation patterns has become an
important first step in planning fuel management interventions.
Site-specific fuel inventory data enhance the accuracy
of fuel management planning and help forest managers in
fuel management decision-making. We have customized
four fuel models for WUIs in southern Italy, starting from
forest classes of land-cover use and adopting a hierarchical
clustering approach. Furthermore, we provide a prediction of
the potential fire behavior of our customized fuel models
using FlamMap 5 under different weather conditions. The
results suggest that fuel model IIIP (Mediterranean maquis)
has the most severe fire potential for the 95th percentile
weather conditions and the least severe potential fire behavior
for the 85th percentile weather conditions. This study
shows that it is possible to create customized fuel models
directly from fuel inventory data. This achievement has
broad implications for land managers, particularly forest
managers of the Mediterranean landscape, an ecosystem that
is susceptible not only to wildfires but also to the increasing
human population and man-made infrastructures