Abstract
Sardinia is subject to many fire events each year. A visibility analysis of old-growth woods from the network of fire lookouts was performed; the visibility of fires from lookouts and the level of old-growthness of woods were then implemented to the common information of wildfire hazard maps to obtain a vulnerability map. The results show that 78% of Sardinian old-growth woods are visible from lookouts and that 99% of them fall into the network of protected areas. However, old-growth woods are unevenly protected from fires, with visibility coverages ranging from 40% in the Sulcis macro-area to 100% in others. Compared with the wildfire hazard map, the vulnerability map led to different outputs in terms of fire protection prioritization, allowing better risk assessment and improved fire control planning. The integration of other parameters into wildfire hazard maps is a replicable focus-oriented approach that might be tested in other contexts.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the staff of the Forestry Agency of Sardinia and to the military staff of the Polygon of Inter-Service Test and Training Range of Salto di Quirra for their kind collaboration. Many thanks to Rodrigo Pardo (University of Castilla-La Mancha) for his help during the sampling phase.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).