Project title: Ardenti Silva

Team: Príncipe Felipe_Forest fires

IES Príncipe Felipe   Madrid   Spain   6 Student’s age: 14-15 years old

How do fires affect the environment?

A forest fire can be described as any uncontrolled and non-prescribed combustion or burning of plants in a natural setting
What conditions cause large wildfires in Portugal and Spain?
Despite being episodic events, large wildfires account for the bulk of burned area in Spain and Portugal. Weather conditions in the days or weeks prior to the onset of a fire change the fuel moisture state of especially the fine fuel and litter, and hence their flammability.
Problems of forest fires or wildfires in Spain:
The risk of wildfires increases in extremely dry conditions, such as drought, and during high winds. Wildfires can disrupt transportation, communications, power and gas services, and water supply. They also lead to a deterioration of the air quality, and loss of property, crops, resources, animals and people.
We have searched which gases are released to the atmosphere in forest fires and how the destruction of vegetation affects the environment. We have done a research on the effects of these gases on the environment. After that, we have seen in the EO browser the concentration of these gases above the wildfires using data from Spain in summer of 2022. We have also analysed what the main causes of these wildfires are, with the purpose of teaching people how to prevent these wildfires that destroy the vegetation and the atmosphere. We collected the data from the EO browser images which show the concentration of some gasses in determined places over a determined period of time.

Many forest fires are caused because of rubbish and cigarettes being left in the nature. Others are made intentionally by piromaniacs that want to see fire. The amount of forest fires caused naturally is of approximately 5%. This means that 95% of them are caused by humans.

Fires release harmful gasses that damage the atmosphere and are harmful if breathed. The consequences of burned vegetation are that less oxygen is released, thus meaning that the species that breathe oxygen have less of it in the air to live. The main causes of man-made fires are cigarette butts, irresponsible bonfires and crystal and plastic left in the wild.
To reduce the number of fires and its consequences, we should be more careful when being at the forest, not dropping trash and only doing bonfires when there are not flammable elements nearby. For making a difference, we need to avoid actions like dropping cigarettes, making fires in the forest and not leave rubbish like crystals and plastics.

https://sites.google.com/iesprincipefelipe.org/ardenti-silva

Download project poster PDF

Projects are created by the teams and they take the full responsibility of the shared data.
← All projects