Ask a firefighter in Dalmatia why this stretch of Croatia’s coast burns so often, and the obvious answers are arson and a warming climate. But another explanation comes up repeatedly: hillsides that are no longer grazed, small farms whose owners have retired or left, and scrub that has gradually taken over as farming declines. Researchers from the University of Zagreb and Bournemouth University, led by Dr Marin Cvitanovic, wanted to understand how these changes actually shape fire patterns on the ground. They combined spatial analysis with interviews with people who live and work in the landscape to piece it together.
A Region Built for Burning
The study covers around 7,500 square kilometres of Croatia’s region of Dalmatia, an area almost the size of Puerto Rico. It includes a narrow, relatively crowded coastal strip and its islands, alongside a much more sparsely populated, mountainous karst hinterland. The setting is unmistakably Mediterranean: hot, dry summers, rocky terrain and vegetation that has evolved with fire.
The researchers approached the problem from two directions. They mapped and analyzed 445 fires recorded across two fire seasons in the 2010s and interviewed over a dozen firefighters and farmers in the region. The spatial data showed where fires were happening; the interviews helped explain why.
Grass, Scrub and the Ghost of Old Pastures
Grassland and shrubland account for a large share of the fires in the region. Grassland alone makes up around 40% of recorded fires and is one of the strongest predictors of fire in the statistical model. Shrubland burns intensely too, but the boundary between the two is often blurred as abandoned pasture gradually becomes denser scrub. In practical terms, both are frequent fire landscapes, although fires in these areas tend to be much smaller than those that take hold in forest.
Coniferous forest tells a different story. It does not burn as often, but when it does, the fires are much larger. Aleppo pine is particularly important here. Its planting expanded substantially after 1945 as part of wider efforts to reforest degraded karst. The species was favoured because it could establish on poor, rocky ground and was considered useful for restoring vegetation and improving soils.In coastal Dalmatia, it became the dominant pine used in these programmes also because it was widely planted around hotels and tourist camps to add greenery.
The problem is that Aleppo pine is also exceptionally well adapted to fire. It regenerates readily after burning, and repeated fires can therefore help it spread at the expense of other vegetation. In the study area, its expansion has contributed to dense pine stands that can carry much larger fires than the grass and scrub landscapes around them.
Elevation adds another part of the picture. Fires are concentrated mainly between 200 and 500 metres above sea level, a relatively small part of the study area that accounts for well over half of recorded fires. Above 1,000 metres they become rare, reflecting both lower human presence and the thinner, more open vegetation found at higher elevations. At the coast, fires are also common, but many are detected and contained before they spread far.
An Empty Countryside
Ask a farmer or a firefighter why the fires keep coming, and abandoned land comes up almost immediately. The data support them. It is not actively farmed land or untouched land that burns most, but land that was once worked and is no longer being managed.
This change has been dramatic. During the second half of the twentieth century, the proportion of Dalmatia’s population working in agriculture fell from roughly 70% to just 3%. In some parts of the region, more than 70% of agricultural land was eventually abandoned. Rural depopulation was compounded by the 1991–1995 war, which left mined and otherwise inaccessible land across parts of the hinterland long after the fighting ended.
For firefighters, the consequences are visible on the hillsides. Areas once kept relatively open by grazing and cultivation have become dense with vegetation. Farmers generally agreed that abandonment was a problem, although with a predictable qualification: the neglected land was rarely their own. Most of those interviewed said they continued to maintain their own plots. The concern was the overgrown hillside next door, or the abandoned field further up the valley, where nobody was left to clear it.
Two Fire Problems, Not One
That raises a question with no simple answer: is it the increasingly populated coast or the increasingly empty hinterland that is driving the fire problem?
In different ways, both are.
The statistical model found that municipalities gaining population were more likely to experience fires. The raw figures tell a similar story. Around a fifth of all recorded fires were concentrated in just two coastal cities, Šibenik and Omiš, together with the expanding wildland–urban fringe around them. More residents, more visitors and more construction inevitably create more opportunities for something to ignite. Split and its surrounding area show much the same pattern.
Yet the fires that start in the abandoned hinterland can become much more destructive. The areas that experienced the sharpest declines in population and farming activity also recorded the largest burned areas. Decades of unmanaged vegetation mean that once a fire gets established, there is simply more fuel available for it to move through.
It is therefore less a choice between two explanations than a combination of them. The coast generates more opportunities for ignition; the abandoned interior provides more fuel. Each side of the landscape problem reinforces the other.
When Farmers and Firefighters See Fire Differently
The interviews reveal a divide that the maps cannot. Agricultural burning remains a routine practice for some farmers, who generally described it as controlled and low-risk. They spoke of burning stubble, weeds or small piles of vegetation during winter or early spring, checking the weather beforehand and keeping the fires contained. Several said they had never experienced one getting out of control.
Firefighters were considerably less reassured. Several attributed a substantial proportion of the fires they attended to agricultural burning, particularly in spring. Some also suspected that deliberate ignition was more widespread than official records indicate. One fire commander questioned how so many fires could appear in the same area at almost the same time if they were all accidental.
Yet there was an interesting point of agreement between the two groups. Neither tended to describe wildfire primarily as an ecological threat. Their concerns were overwhelmingly human: houses, olive groves, vineyards, livestock and people’s safety. The forests and other ecosystems affected by repeated burning received far less attention. For people living with fire, the immediate question is usually what might be lost in the next few hours, rather than what happens to an ecosystem over the following decades.
A Landscape Still in Transition
Dalmatia’s fire problem is ultimately tied to a much bigger transformation of the landscape. The countryside has emptied as agriculture declined and people moved towards cities and the coast, while the coastal belt has continued to grow through tourism. Inland, grazing, cultivation and routine clearing have declined, allowing vegetation to build up across former agricultural land. Along the coast, meanwhile, population growth and development have expanded the urban-wildland interface, bringing more people and infrastructure into contact with fire-prone vegetation.
The researchers are careful not to suggest that land use explains everything. Their model accounted for less than half of the variation in fire occurrence, and factors such as temperature and rainfall were not included, even though they are clearly important. That matters even more as the Mediterranean warms and dry conditions become more severe.
Still, the study points to something easy to miss when wildfires are reduced to a story about heat, drought and human negligence. Fire risk is also shaped by what happens when a landscape loses the people who once managed it. Managing that risk may therefore require not only preparing for hotter, drier conditions, but also finding ways to maintain abandoned land and limit the exposure of new development to fire-prone areas. Because every abandoned field left to overgrow is a small bet that this summer’s spark won’t catch. Sooner or later, that bet comes due.
Jajtić, K., Galijan, V., Žafran, I., & Cvitanović, M. (2019). Analysing wildfire occurrence through a mixed-method approach: A case study from the Croatian Mediterranean. ERDKUNDE, 73(4), 323–341. https://doi.org/10.3112/erdkunde.2019.04.05
Pavlek, K., Bišćević, F., Furčić, P., Grđan, A., Gugić, V., Malešić, N., Moharić, P., Vragović, V., Fuerst-Bjeliš, B., & Cvitanović, M. (2017). Spatial patterns and drivers of fire occurrence in a Mediterranean environment: A case study of southern Croatia. Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography, 117(1), 22–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/00167223.2016.1266272
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