The impact of the changing climate on fire activity in Muğla region

Abstract

It is a known fact that there is a relationship between forest fires and climate factors. Therefore, researchers have always been interested in revealing this relationship and its level in order to struggle with fires. Today, due to the changing climate in the world, this relationship is in a differentiation process. In many countries, researchers have started to study the relationship between fires and climate factors more often. The reason behind is the fact that, besides the change in climate, there is an obvious change in fire activity. The aim is not only to take the measures against fires, but also to estimate possible future forest fires. In order to reveal the relationship between climate change and forest fires, the effects of temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, wind, insolation, cloudiness, and other climatic factors on forest fires can be examined. In the current study, the Muğla Region has been chosen as the study area because of its high forest fire activity rate. The relationship between the number of fires and the area burned and the relationship between these components and annual temperature, summer temperature, annual precipitation, and summer precipitation averages were analyzed. Moving from the results obtained from the relationship between positive and negative changes, this study examines the effect of changes in precipitation and temperatures on fire activity. © 2015 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.