ORIGINAL RESEARCH
The Impact of the Changing Climate on Fire
Activity in Muğla Region
Tuğrul Varol, Mertol Ertuğrul
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Faculty of Forestry, Bartin University, Turkey
Submission date: 2014-05-06
Final revision date: 2014-06-05
Acceptance date: 2014-07-08
Publication date: 2015-05-20
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2015;24(3):1363–1371
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ABSTRACT
It is a known fact that there is a relationship between forest fires and climate factors. Therefore,
researchers have always been interested in revealing this relationship and its level in order to struggle with
fires. Today, due to the changing climate in the world, this relationship is in a differentiation process. In many
countries, researchers have started to study the relationship between fires and climate factors more often. The
reason behind is the fact that, besides the change in climate, there is an obvious change in fire activity. The
aim is not only to take the measures against fires, but also to estimate possible future forest fires. In order to
reveal the relationship between climate change and forest fires, the effects of temperature, precipitation, relative
humidity, wind, insolation, cloudiness, and other climatic factors on forest fires can be examined. In the
current study, the Muğla Region has been chosen as the study area because of its high forest fire activity rate.
The relationship between the number of fires and the area burned and the relationship between these
components and annual temperature, summer temperature, annual precipitation, and summer precipitation
averages were analyzed. Moving from the results obtained from the relationship between positive and negative
changes, this study examines the effect of changes in precipitation and temperatures on fire activity.