University of Alicante, Spain.
Director of SINIF.
Abstract
Forest fires are a global environmental
problem that burn millions of hectares every year throughout the
planet, causing
human and economic losses as well as significant degradation of the
natural environment. In Southern Europe, with Spain
and Portugal at the head, 70% of the continent's forest fires occur. The
growing human population and continuous occupation of
the territory, exercise a role of domination and submission of nature.
For this and other reasons, we can´t omit the involvement
of humans in the probability of occurrence of fires in the world. At
present, it seems obvious that we are experiencing a
change of trend in aspects such as temperature and precipitation rates,
something that, together with other environmental
evidences, has been associated with global climate change. In this
context and as it always did, fire plays a modulating role in
the characteristics of the vegetation and the structure of the
landscape. This last aspect is the one we focus on in this study.
Some of our findings determine that 95.90%, of the Spanish population
surveyed, consider that there is a representative and
characteristic landscape in the area where they live. We have also found
that the "recreational" value of landscape is greater
than the "economic" value, an aspect that may be relevant when it comes
to forest management and forest fires. On the other
hand, we have been able to confirm the high concern of Spanish citizens
for the threat posed by natural phenomena to the
landscape of their community and, especially, the concern about the
threat of forest fires on the landscape, where 80.34% of
our sample has identified damage to the landscape due to the impact of
forest fires. Studies on social perception are a good
tool for planning and improving prevention and risk management, as well
as for the development of environmental policies
appropriate to each specific territory.
Environment Pollution and Climate Change Open Access (ISSN: 2573-458X)
Citation: Senabre, Jaime (2018). Forest fires and social perception of the landscape: A study with Spanish population. In Environment Pollution and Climate Change, 2018, Volume 2. pp84. DOI: 10.4172/2573-458X-C1-002
5th World Conference on Climate Change. 2018, London, UK.
Recent Publications
1. Senabre J (2018) Forest fires from the perspective of environmental psychology. Climate Change 4(13).
2. Senabre J (2017) Wildland fires, climate change and society. J. Earth Sci Clim. Change 8(10).
3. Senabre J (2016) Wildland fires and climate change. J. Earth Sci Clim. Change 7(5).
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