Increased fire activity, related both to human activities and to climate change, necessitates effective fire prevention and suppression strategies. The main purpose of this paper is to model and map fire suppression difficulty using common approaches in three different ecosystems in Eastern Europe by employing very high-resolution satellite imagery and landscape fire behaviour modelling. The integrated approach could allow fire managers to organize prevention and management of firefighting activities more efficiently by implementing both simple and easy-to-use risk and operational fire suppression difficulty indices. The development of cross-border common methodological approaches could foster cooperation between national authorities that would also maximize the efficiency of firefighting procedures.

Yusufeli mikro havzasında (Artvin) yüzey erozyonu toprak kaybının tahmin edilmesi ve erozyon risk haritasının oluşturulması

The alleviation of landslide impacts is a priority since they have the potential to cause significant economic damage as well as the loss of human life. Mitigation can be achieved effectively by using warning systems and preventive measures. The development of improved methodologies for the analysis and understanding of landslides is at the forefront of this scientific field. Identifying effective monitoring techniques (accurate, fast, and low cost) is the pursued objective. Geographic Information Systems (GISs) and remote sensing techniques are utilized in order to achieve this goal. In this study, four methodological approaches (manual landslide delineation, a segmentation process, and two mapping models, specifically object-based image analysis and pixel-based image analysis (OBIA and PBIA)) were proposed and tested with the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and data analysis methods to showcase the state and evolution of landslides. The digital surface model (DSM)-based classification approach was also used to support the aforementioned approaches. This study focused on streamside landslides at research sites in three different countries: Greece, Romania, and Turkey. The results highlight that the areas of the OBIA-based classifications were the most similar (98%) to our control (manual) classifications for all three sites. The landslides’ perimeters at the Lefkothea and Chirlesti sites showed similar results to the OBIA-based classification (93%), as opposed to the Sirtoba site, where the perimeters of the landslides from OBIA-based classification were not well corroborated by the perimeters in the manual classification. Deposition areas that extend beyond the trees were revealed by the DSM-based classification. The results are encouraging because the methodology can be used to monitor landslide evolution with accuracy and high performance in different regions. Specifically, terrains that are difficult to access can be surveyed by UAVs because of their ability to take aerial images. The obtained results provide a framework for the unitary analysis of landslides using modern techniques and tools.

The aim of this study was to develop allometric equations for the estimation of above-ground biomass components of Calabrian pine (Pinus brutia Ten.) tree in the Mediterranean Region of Turkey. Using regression analysis, different allometric equations were fitted for the tree components of the above-ground biomass using diameter at breast height (dbh) and tree height as estimators. Two hundred and ninety-two trees between 0.4 and 63.0 cm in dbh were randomly sampled throughout 292 natural, pure Calabrian pine stands in Turkey’s Mediterranean Region, where it forms diverse stand structures. Finally, the allometric equations were developed for the tree components of the Calabrian pine tree for the stem, bark, branch, needle and total above-ground biomass. The stem, bark and total biomass equations explained more than 90% of the observed variability, while the branch and needle biomass equations explained 82% and 65%, respectively.

Floods often cause changes in the hydro-geomorphology of riverbeds and banks. These changes need to be closely monitored to find a balance and exchange between lateral and vertical erosion and deposition, upstream local sediment supply, and a stream’s transport capacity. Low-frequency cross-sectional field surveys cannot map hard-to-reach locations. Innovative techniques, such as small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), must be employed to monitor these processes. This research compared historical data with a UAV survey and the Pix4DMapper structure-from-motion (SfM) program to assess the longitudinal, lateral, and vertical changes of Sidere Creek in the eastern Black Sea, Türkiye. Digitization was undertaken using 2011–2015–2017 Google Earth photographs, 1960s topographic maps, and 2023 orthomosaics. ArcGIS 10.6 was used to delineate the centerlines (thalweg), left/right banks, alluvial bars, active channel widths, and channel confinement layers. Channel Migration Toolbox and CloudCompare were utilized for analyzing lateral and vertical morphological changes, respectively. The active channel migrated 25.57 m during 1960–2011, 15.84 m during 2011–2015, 6.96 m during 2015–2017, and 5.79 m during 2017–2023. Left-bank channel confinement rose from 2.4% to 42% and right-bank channel confinement from 5.9% to 34.8% over 63 years. Neither stream meandering nor sinuosity index changed statistically. Active channel boundary widths varied from 149.79 m to 9.46 m, averaging 37.3 m. It can be concluded that UAV surveys can precisely measure and monitor the stream channel longitudinal, lateral, and vertical morphological changes at a lower cost and in less time than previous methods.