DOI: 10.5061/dryad.k98sf7m8c
title: Data from: Pyrogeography across the western Palearctic: A diversity of fire regimes

description: We characterised fire regimes and estimated fire regime parameters (area
 burnt, size, intensity, season, patchiness, pyrodiversity) at broad
 spatial scales using remotely sensed individual-fire data. Specifically,
 we focused on the western part of the Palearctic realm, i.e., Europe,
 North Africa, and the Near East. We first divided the study area into
 eight large ecoregions based on their environment and vegetation
 (ecoregions): Mediterranean, Arid, Atlantic, Mountains, Boreal, Steppes,
 Continental, and Tundra. Then we intersected each ecoregion with
 individual-fire data obtained from remote sensing hotspots to estimate
 fire regime parameters for each environment. This allowed us to compute
 annual area burnt, fire size, fire intensity, fire season, fire
 patchiness, fire recurrence, and pyrodiversity for each ecoregion. We then
 related those fire parameters with the ecoregions’ climate and analysed
 the temporal trends in fire size. The results suggest that fire regime
 parameters vary across different environments (ecoregions). The
 Mediterranean had the largest, most intense, and most recurrent fires, but
 the Steppes had the largest burnt area. Arid ecosystems had the most
 extended fire season, Tundra had the patchiest fires, and Boreal forests
 had the earliest fires of the year. The spatial variability in fire
 regimes was largely explained by the variability of climate and
 vegetation, with a tendency for greater fire activity in the warmer
 ecoregions. There was also a temporal tendency for fires to become larger
 during the last two decades, especially in Arid and Continental
 environments. In conclusion, fire regime characteristics of each ecoregion
 are unique, with a tendency for greater fire activity in warmer
 environments, and for increasingly large fires in recent decades.
description: We first defined
 eight large ecoregions
 based on their environment and vegetation: Mediterranean, Arid, Atlantic,
 Mountains, Boreal, Steppes, Continental, and Tundra. These ecoregions were defined by
 aggregating 81 WWF ecoregions with the help of the bioregions
 (https://www.oneearth.org/bioregions-2020/). We provide the shape files with these
 ecoregions.  Then we intersected each ecoregion with
 individual-fire data obtained from remote sensing hotspots to estimate
 fire regime parameters for each environment. Specifically, we
 computed the following fire statistics for each ecoregion and year
 (2001-2019): area burnt; mean fire size; fire intensity; fire season; fire
 patchiness (CV of the fire intensity in each fire); fire recurrence and
 pyrodiversity. This data was estimated based on individual-fire data
 provided in GlobFire (Artés et al. 2019) except fire intensity that was
 estimated using MODIS hotspots (Collection 6 Active Fire Products from
 Terra and Aqua satellites, dataset MCD14ML; downloaded from the University
 of Maryland, USA; period 2001-2021). Fire recurrence for each ecoregion
 was estimated as the number of times each patch was burnt. The
 pyrodiversity of each ecoregion (i.e., fire-caused landscape
 heterogeneity) was estimated as the Shannon diversity of fire patches,
 that is, considering the relative abundance (sizes) of fire-produced
 patches in each ecoregion. The data provided is the average by ecoregion
 and year, except for patchiness we provide the area of each patch in each
 ecoregion, and the number of times the patch burned. More details are
 provided in the original article.
description: The ecoregion map is in "shape" format and can be
 opened with most GIS softwares (e.g., QGIS). The data is provided as
 comma-delimited files (csv; ASCII) and can be opened with most softwares
 for numerical analysis (e.g. in R using the function read.csv) or with a
 spreadsheet (e.g., LibreOffice Spreadsheet).