Greece wildfires

Subject: Geography

Context: Thousands of people have fled parts of the Greek island of Evia and Athens due to raging uncontrolled wildfires.

While wildfires are common in some parts of the world during the summer season, concern is rising about recent such blazes that have wreaked havoc in Australia, western US and now the Mediterranean.

About Wildfires

Wildfires or forest fires occur during hot and dry seasons. Since dry leaves, shrubs, grass and deadwood are easily combustible, they are easy to ignite.
Ignition can either happen naturally, such as through lightning strikes, or triggered accidentally, such as from cigarette stubs, to clear land or to control an incoming forest fire by removing vegetation that would provide more fuel to it.

Impacts of Wildfires:

Wildfires release large amounts of carbon dioxide, black carbon, brown carbon, and ozone precursors into the atmosphere. These emissions affect radiation, clouds, and climate on regional and even global scales.
But the fires also release nutrients into the soil and are an important part of ecological succession, plant germination, and soil enhancement.
As per the latest report of the IPCC a global increase in average temperatures can lead to more intense heat waves. Therefore, increasingly warm and dry weather conditions resulting from climate change can lead to more extreme fires and more extreme fire seasons.

About Evia Island:

Also called Euboea, it is Greece’s second-largest island in area and population, after Crete.
It is separated from Boeotia in mainland Greece by the narrow Euripus Strait.
It is a rugged long and narrow island of forests and covers almost touching the Greek mainland.

About Athens:

It is the capital and largest city of Greece.
Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world’s oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years.
Classical Athens was a powerful city-state and was a center for the arts, learning and philosophy, and the home of Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum.
It is widely referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, largely because of its cultural and political impact on the European continent particularly Ancient Rome.