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This study proposes and evaluates a relatively new concept for fire occurrence zoning based on documented historical fire records. The proposed method creates continuous kernel density surfaces based on wildland fire ignition observations. Kernels have the advantage of directly producing density estimates that are not influenced by grid size or localization effects. Within this scheme, kernel density surfaces have been created and reclassified to construct fire occurrence zones at local to global scales in the Mediterranean Basin. Specifically, fire occurrence zones were created for the European scale (European Mediterranean Basin), national scale (Greece), regional scale (Peloponnese, Greece) and local scale (Chalkidiki, Greece). To evaluate fire occurrence zones, we compared the observed with the expected distribution of the number of fires within these zones using a Monte Carlo randomization test, finding that these numbers were statistically different in all cases. The deviations observed from the expected distributions towards the high occurrence zone indicated their successful assessment and value. In this paper, we further discuss their potential role and use for multi-scale fire management and policy in a European context.

In recent decades, there is an increasing need for harmonised and accurate information on the status and extent of forests. However, delineating the extent of forest areas is a complex task, since the existence of more than 100 definitions of forest worldwide causes considerable discrepancies in forested area estimates. The aim of this work was to examine the potential of geographic object based image analysis (GEOBIA) and very high spatial resolution imagery to discriminate forest areas following two different definitions of forest in northern Greece. In particular, we examined the definition of forest under the Greek law as well as the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation definition. Our findings suggest that the developed GEOBIA approach not only performed remarkably well for the discrimination of forest areas but also allowed to estimate rapidly and reliably forest extents when the two aforementioned forest definitions were employed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]