Fire Management of Mediterranean Landscapes - Fire in Mediterranean Ecosystems - page 358

(a)
(b)
Fig. 13.1 Wildland-urban interface (WUI) in (a) southern France and (b) southern California.
(Photos by Jon Keeley.)
twentieth century, as population centers grew and expanded outward into these
wildland areas ( Fig. 13.1 ), these fires became increasingly destructive to property
and lives (Martin & Sapsis 1995 ). Examples of recent such events are in Table 13.1 .
Although such fires typically last for days or even weeks, the period of destruction
is often less than a day during bouts of extreme fire weather (e.g. Cheney 1979 ;
Keeley et al. 2009b ).
Some regions have repeatedly suffered devastating losses of property and lives;
other regions, despite a regime of frequent fires, have been spared. Certainly a