# Mapping the Most Susceptible Regions to Fire in Portugal
## 5 Conclusions  
Favourable fire weather conditions have been increasing during the last decades over the Mediterranean region, and thereby in Portugal, due to climate change. In association with accumulated and unmanaged fuel in many areas, large fires have occurred in the last 20 years in Portugal, leading to severe economic, social, human, and ecological consequences. In this context, this study aims to identify and characterize the regions with the highest susceptibility to burn in the country, considering a multivariable set of variables related to fires.  
The PCA performed here showed that the availability of fuel in ecosystems plays an important role in mediating the vegetation's susceptibility to fire, allowing the inference that the continuity of unmanaged landscapes, especially in the northern and centre regions of Portugal, will promote more flammable and intense wildfires in the next years. In fact, the most highly fire-susceptible areas are mainly covered by shrublands or forests, or a mixture of both, which constitutes an enhancement of fire risk in many areas.  
The assessment of the applied method relied on the study of the fire season of 2022, allowing the conclusion that this set of variables is suitable for the purpose of the study and to show that the presence of hotspots of vegetation's susceptibility in some regions can promote large fires, as in the case of A1. The overall results also show that fuel management policies are essential in reducing, to a certain extent, the impact of wildfires in fire-prone hotspots like Portugal. Moreover, considering that hotter and drier conditions in summer will amplify the fire risk across wide regions in the coming years, the effectiveness of land management can be a strong way to partly mitigate the impact of fires.  
The following supporting information can be downloaded at: [[https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/fire6070254/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/fire6070254/s1)]([https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/fire6070254/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/fire6070254/s1)), Figure S1: GPP accumulation in burned areas since the last fire event occurrence; Figure S2: GPP\({}_{\text{ANOM}}\) in Portugal, between 2001 and 2021; Figure S3: Map of burned areas of the fire season of 2022 in Portugal for the months of June (yellow spots), July (orange spots) and August (red spots); Table S1: Categories and sub-categories of land cover classes used in this study. The acronym, as well as the representative color used, are identified; Table S2: Explained variance of the first six PCs and the total amount of variance explained by these PCs. The corresponding eigenvalues are also expressed.  
All authors participated in the conceptual design of the study and contributed to the interpretation and analysis of the results, as well as the redaction of the manuscript. [PERSON] and [PERSON] made the calculations, figures and tables. [PERSON] wrote the manuscript. [PERSON] and [PERSON] designed the methodology and defined the datasets. [PERSON] contributed to improving the analysis and redaction of the manuscript. [PERSON] provided the calculations of fire variables and contributed to the redaction of the manuscript. Each of the co-authors performed a thorough revision of the document, providing useful advice on the intellectual content. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This study was supported by the FCT (Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, Portugal) through national funds (PIDAAAC)--UIBD/50019/2020, under the project FlorestaLimpa (PCIF/MOG/0161/2019). The study was also performed within the framework of LSA-SAF, co-funded by EUMETSAT, and it was also partially supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research project FirEUlrisk, with the Grant Agreement no. 101003890.  
Not applicable.  
No new data were presented in this study. Reanalysis and remote sensing data are public.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.