Ricerc@Sapienza

Estimating the effectiveness of protected areas in reducing deforestation is useful to support management decisions. This information helps underpin whether to invest in better management of areas already protected or to create new ones. Statistical matching is commonly used to assess this effectiveness, but regional differences in protection effectiveness and the presence of spatial autocorrelation are frequently overlooked. We assessed methods to estimate the effectiveness of protected areas, using Colombia as a case study.

In human-affected fire environments, assessing the influence of human activities on the spatial distribution of wildfire ignitions is of paramount importance for fire management planning. Previous studies have shown that roads have significant effects on fire ignition. However, since different land cover classes are subject to different levels of ignition risk, roads in different land cover classes may differently affect fire ignition.

Humans have increasingly been affecting fire regimes through changes in the amount and distribution of ignition energy and fuel load. Within the context of global change, recent studies have shown that changes in demography and land use account for far more variability in shaping fire regimes than climatic variations. The objectives of this study are to analyze temporal trends in fire ignitions in selected land use/land cover (LULC) classes in Sardinia (Italy) over the years 2000–2015, and to assess the role of demographic dynamics from 1971 to 2011 over such changes.