Extreme wildfires that have occurred in different parts of the world over the past decade, such as in Portugal in 2017 and Australia in 2019-2020, show us that fire regimes are changing. It is estimated that the frequency of destructive rural fires will increase, particularly in Mediterranean regions, potentially causing severe environmental, economic, and social impacts.

Changes in land use, sociodemographic conditions, and climate change are identified as the main drivers of shifts in fire occurrence patterns. Agricultural abandonment due to rural exodus—a trend observed in southern European countries for several decades—and the resulting lack of landscape management lead to the accumulation of forest fuels, reshaping territories and increasing fire risk, which is further exacerbated by extreme weather conditions.

Countries like Portugal, which are heavily affected by wildfires, face the challenge of adjusting fire management systems to address emerging threats and protect diverse landscapes. To be more effective, mitigation and adaptation strategies should be based on landscape-level management approaches tailored to specific territorial contexts.
 
​The Change4Fire project aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the interactions between the key factors influencing rural fires, such as land use and climatic conditions, and how their interplay shapes distinct environmental contexts that require tailored strategies.

The main objective of this project is to develop a fire hazard model that considers territorial diversity, incorporating the interactions between land use, terrain morphology, and climatic parameters. The model can estimate scenarios for the 21st century to support the timely preparation of different territories.
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​The specific objectives, which guide its activities and tasks, are:

• Refine climate projections and incorporate territorial diversity by identifying Homogeneous Climate Response Units (HCRU);
• Improve land-use change models through the integration of HCRU;
• Estimate fire hazard scenarios for 2040 and 2070, based on the land-use change model that integrates HCRU;
• Develop scenario profiles according to different variable combinations and the relative importance of conditioning factors;
• Propose mitigation and adaptation strategies tailored to the profiles and future scenarios;
• Create automated routines to facilitate the replication and broader use of the developed models and analysis procedures.