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Abstract

The fire season of 2007 was particularly devastating for Greece, achieving the new all-time record of estimated burnt area (225,734 ha) since 1980. The season was remarkably severe in Peloponnese Peninsula, in southern continental Greece, being considered the most extreme natural disaster in the recent history of Greece. Moreover during the hydrological year of 2007, Peloponnese was struck by a severe winter drought that corresponds to the second lowest annual accumulated value since 1951. However, the subsequent spring was very wet partially attenuating the effect of the previous drought. Additionally, the region was stricken by three heat heaves during summer, being the number of hot nights especially noticeable, surpassing more than 35 nights over the Southern Greece. Here we show that the central and Northern sector of Peloponnese Peninsula become the most susceptible to wildfires due to the combined effect of the two extreme meteorological events, drought and heatwaves which was confirmed by the location of the main burnt areas of 2007 fire season. Additionally, the analysis showed that during the extreme days of fire activity in 2007, strong northerly advection of very hot and dry air over the region, favored fire occurrence.
The study attempts to bring new light to the synergistic effect between fuel availability and weather conditions that created extraordinary conditions for fire propagation. We focused on the largest burnt areas and the respective NDVI behavior is assessed throughout the pre fire periods. We found that vegetation dynamics are related to the extreme climatic events that occurred in these periods. Moreover, our results confirm that the higher fire incidence in areas with higher vegetation activity and density seems to indicate that the large burnt areas of 2007 fires season in Peloponnese Peninsula appear to be more sensitive to fuel availability and vegetation density than to vegetation dryness. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.