Description:
This product estimates the economic values of expected damages by wildfires for the European Territory assessed for different assets (some provisioning services such as agricultural and forestry goods; regulating ecosystem services such as pollination, carbon sequestration and soil erosion; and manufactured capital such as properties). Values are mapped and reported at a resolution of 1 km2 for the year 2021.
The approach used for the assessment of the potential damage of wildfires is based on the correction of the economic value of natural capital by a loss coefficient (ranging 0 to 1), function of the intensity of fire (Dinerstein et al 1995) and the time of recovery of the asset (Brun et al 2019). Coefficients of loss are measured in Spanish Mediterranean forests for timber (Sritharan et al 2022), carbon sequestration (Anderson et al 2009) and soil erosion (Arrogante-Funes et al 2024) and adapted to other assets (agricultural perennial crops) according to the judgement of the research team.
Economic values of natural capital (agricultural and forestry assets) are assessed by market-based approach. The values of regulating ecosystem services are taken by the INCA project (Archibald et al 2019, Vargas et al 2023), while the value of properties is made by correcting national prices provided by Numbeo by the local GDP per capita (Shwörer et al 2014).
We derived maps of damage for timber, livestock, fruit trees, olive groves and vineyards, assuming that the value of natural capital asset is lost for the time necessary for a specific asset to recover from wildfires. Recovery time for trees is variable from 50 to 200 years (Vargas et al 2023). We have assumed 50 years as a reasonable time to assess the damage of timber. There is no information in the literature about the recovery time of fruit trees, olive groves and vineyards, therefore the choice of recovery time (5 years) was guided only by judgement of the research team. Recovery time for the damage of ecosystem services such as soil retention are measured assuming values proposed by Milazzo et al. (2022) (Stevens et al 2020), ranging from 6 to 20 years.
These damages are assessed as the present value of the future losses, assumed constant until the natural asset has fully recovered (Brun et al 2019). A social discount rate of 3.5% is used.
Values of carbon sequestration are generated with an approach that considers the recovery of vegetation following a logistic curve (Castillo et al 2017). The parameters of the logistic curve are not empirically estimated, nor deduced from the literature, but proposed by the research team to test their sensitivity on the expected damage.
Damage to properties is assessed by correcting the property values by a coefficient of loss, which is function of the material of the property (concrete or wood) and the intensity of fire. These coefficients of loss are proposed by the research team but not yet validated.
Contact: Simone Martino, HUTTON: simone.martino@hutton.ac.uk
Clara Ochoa, UAH: mclara.ochoa@uah.es
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