Evolution of forest fires in Spain and Extremadura: Correlation with Climate Change?

Abstract

This paper deals in a synthetic and diachronic way with some of the aspects that, over time, manage to alter biodiversity in protected areas and, therefore, their effects on the activities carried out in the rural world with an impact on the permanence of the population, such as forest fires in Spain and the active role of the administrations that deploy a series of measures aimed at repairing the damage caused. The role of the forestry sector is significant for the fixation of the population in the so-called "empty Spain". For this reason, the study focuses on a decisive threat such as fires and their direct or indirect association, as the case may be, with climate change, which many point to as the main cause and which we have tried to verify in our study. To carry out this analysis, we evaluated the forest fires in Spain and their comparison with Extremadura, examining the temperatures observed at the national level since 1961, also considering the heat waves recorded in the country since AEMET has been collecting these data. Statistical results show that there is no direct correlation between the increase in mean annual temperatures and the number of fires and the extent of the burnt area.