Already burned or equivalent to half the area of mainland Portugal
More than four million hectares have burned in recent decades, and in 2022 alone more than 50 thousand hectares have burned, more than last year’s total.
According to the Portuguese Association of Data Science for Social Good (DSSG PT), which organized a voluntary project and complete data between 1980 and 2021, burned or equivalent to 55% of the area of mainland Portugal in forest fires.
“It really burned a lot“, most highlighted Basos, the data scientist who developed most of the project. In the case of 2003 or 2017, the stain resulting from the burned area is even greater, according to news from the Public.
According to project data, 4.86 million hectares burned in almost 42 years, equivalent to 48,583 square kilometers — more than half of the square kilometers corresponding to 92,000 square kilometers in the area of Portugal.
There are areas that are not big that are considered different from Portugal, but they are not big, but they mean that they are different from Portugal. Data ranges from January 15, 1980 to September 15, 2021.
Data from the Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests (ICNF) and Civil Protection are available to anyonebut they are “spread all over the place”, explains Nadiia Basos, a native of Ukraine.
Some data also had different words and formats. “Now they are still open, but more organized“, adds Basos.
The project also created an interactive map which allows to see an evolution of the burned area by municipality, in each month of each year.
In June 2017 it is possible to see the 30 thousand hectares that burned in the fires of Pedrógão Grande during that month, which caused deaths.
In October 2017, several hectares were also burned in the national territory, especially in the Center, corresponding to thousands of hectares and also caused a considerable death that devastated thousands of hectares and caused people.
It aimed to allow the understanding of the phenomenon of forest fires, allowing “new observations that inform a strategy combat fires,” according to a statement.
ONE PT DSSG It is a community that created data from the open community also with science, which is an authority with data on covid-19 in Portugal and other interest regimes.
The first step in this case was replaced the data. ICNF data was used, had already been organized by an open access data in Portugal called Data Center, and Civil Protection.
In the analysis carried out, fires that had a domestic, industrial or urban origin were eliminated, as well as fires in very small areas, explains Nadiia.