BOSQUE 37(1): 147-158, 2016 DOI: 10.4067/S0717-92002016000100014 Análisis espacio-temporal de incendios forestales en la región del Maule, Chile Spatio-temporal analyses of wildfires in the region of Maule, Chile Ignacio Díaz-Hormazábal a,b*, Mauro E González a *Autor de correspondencia: a Universidad Austral de Chile, Facultad de Ciencias Forestales y Recursos Naturales, Instituto de Conservación, Biodiversidad y Territorio, Laboratorio de Ecología de Bosques, casilla 567, Valdivia, Chile,
[email protected] b Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Ciencias Agronómicas, Departamento de Ciencias Ambientales y Recursos Naturales, Av. Santa Rosa 11315, La Pintana, Santiago, Chile. SUMMARY In the last decades, forest fires have been a concern in different regions of the world, especially by increased occurrences product of human activities and climate changes. In this study the spatio-temporal trends in the occurrence and area affected by fire in the Maule region during the period 1986-2012 were examined. We use the Corporación Nacional Forestal fire database, whose records were spatially represented by a grid of 2x2 km. The occurrence was stable during the analyzed period with an average of 378 events per year. The burned area presented three periods above average with 5.273 hectares per year. Most of the fires affected surfaces of less than 5 hectares, while a very small number of events explain most of the area annually burned in the region. According to the startup fuel, we found an increasing number of events initiated in forest plantations in contrast to the decreasing number of fires originated in the native forests.