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We searched for geographical patterns in the orientation of wildfires, using watersheds as spatial support for the analysis. An 1975–2005 annual fire atlas of mainland Portugal was used to compute the orientation of fire perimeters and watersheds, using principal component analysis. Circular statistics were employed to test for the existence of a preferred, as opposed to random, mean fire orientation in each watershed, and to search for evidence of orographic channelling of fire by comparing fire orientation and watershed orientation. We also tested for differences in fire orientation patterns under conditions of mild versus severe fire weather. Our findings show that in the 31 year period of the study, 84% of the overall area burned is accounted for by watersheds where fires display preferential orientation. Twelve of 102 watersheds display evidence of alignment between fire and watershed orientation and we found no distinction in fire orientation as response to fire weather. The spatial arrangement of watersheds where fires present similar orientation suggests wind as a major driver of the broader patterns found in this study. Results from this analysis ought to be relevant for supporting the delineation of landscape- scale fuelbreaks.

Using 100 years of fire perimeter maps, we investigate the existence of geographical patterns in fire orientation across California. We computed fire perimeter orientation, at the watershed level, using principal component analysis. Circular statistics were used to test for the existence of preferential fire perimeter orientations. Where perimeters displayed preferential orientation, we searched for evidence of orographic channeling by comparing mean fire orientation with watershed orientation. Results show that in California, 49% of the burnt area is associated with watersheds, where fires displayed preferential orientation. From these, 25% of the burnt area is aligned along the NE/SW orientation and 18% in the E/W orientation. In 27 out of 86 watersheds with preferential fire alignment, there is also correspondence between mean fire orientation and watershed orientation. Topographic influence on fire spread and dominant wind patterns during the fire season can account for the consistency in fire perimeter orientation in these regions. Our findings highlight the historical pattern of fire perimeter orientation and identify watersheds with potential orographic channeling This paper was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia Ph.D. Grant SFRH/BD/40398/2007. JMCP participated in this research under the framework of research projects “Forest fire under climate, social and economic changes in Europe, the Mediterranean and other fire-affected areas of the world (FUME)”, EC FP7 Grant Agreement No. 243888.

Fire frequency in 21 forest planning regions of Portugal during the period 1975–2005 was estimated from historical burnt area maps generated with semi-automatic classification of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) satellite imagery. Fire return interval distributions were modelled with the Weibull function and the estimated parameters were used to calculate regional mean, median and modal fire return intervals, as well as regional hazard functions. Arrangement of the available data into three different time series allowed for assessment of the effects of minimum mapping unit, time series length and use of censored data on the Weibull function parameter estimates. Varying the minimum mapping unit between 5 and 35 ha had a negligible effect on parameter estimates, whereas changing the time series length from 22 to 31 years substantially affected the estimates. However, the strongest effect was caused by censored data. Its exclusion led to substantial overestimation of fire frequency and of burning probability dependence on fuel age. We estimated a country-wide mean fire interval of 36 years and an annual burnt area of 1.2%. Regional variations in fire frequency descriptors were interpreted in terms of land cover and land use practices that affect the contemporary fire regime in Portugal.

Previous research has shown that fires burn certain land cover types disproportionally to their abundance. We used quantile regression to study land cover proneness to fire as a function of fire size, under the hypothesis that they are inversely related, for all land cover types. Using five years of fire perimeters, we estimated conditional quantile functions for lower (avoidance) and upper (preference) quantiles of fire selectivity for five land cover types - annual crops, evergreen oak woodlands, eucalypt forests, pine forests and shrublands. The slope of significant regression quantiles describes the rate of change in fire selectivity (avoidance or preference) as a function of fire size. We used Monte-Carlo methods to randomly permutate fires in order to obtain a distribution of fire selectivity due to chance. This distribution was used to test the null hypotheses that 1) mean fire selectivity does not differ from that obtained by randomly relocating observed fire perimeters; 2) that land cover proneness to fire does not vary with fire size. Our results show that land cover proneness to fire is higher for shrublands and pine forests than for annual crops and evergreen oak woodlands. As fire size increases, selectivity decreases for all land cover types tested. Moreover, the rate of change in selectivity with fire size is higher for preference than for avoidance. Comparison between observed and randomized data led us to reject both null hypotheses tested (a = 0.05) and to conclude it is very unlikely the observed values of fire selectivity and change in selectivity with fire size are due to chance. Funding: This paper was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia Ph.D. Grant SFRH/BD/40398/2007. JMCP participated in this research under the framework of research projects ‘‘Forest fire under climate, social and economic changes in Europe, the Mediterranean and other fire-affected areas of the world (FUME)’’, EC FP7 Grant Agreement No. 243888. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript