Vulnerabilities

Wildfires in Belgium have not received much attention in literature so far. On the one hand, this gap can be justified by the lack of casualties and the low wildfire frequency, but, on the other hand, fires have been inflicting considerable damage to valuable nature areas. The prevalence of wildfires in Belgium is rather limited. The annual burnt area rarely exceeds 40ha. In 2011, a year with an exceptionally dry spring characterized by 70 % less precipitation than usual, more than 2360 ha of land was affected by wildfires. Since even the vaster wildfires in Belgium did not damage infrastructure or housing, while there have been no human casualties up to this day, it may be concluded that the damage cost of wildfires in Belgium is very limited (1).

References

The references below are cited in full in a separate map 'References'. Please click here if you are looking for the full references for Belgium.

1. Depicker et al. (2020)