Abstract

Forest fires are a recurring disturbance in Mediterranean ecosystems, but they also impact air quality and public health, particularly given recent trends towards increasingly widespread and extreme fires. This study analyzed six large fires that occurred in Sardinia, Italy, between 2009 and 2021, in order to evaluate their impact on ground-level PM10 concentrations and to investigate the influence of fire size, fuel type, and meteorological conditions. The analysis included data on fire perimeters and land cover, meteorological conditions, smoke plume trajectory simulations using HYSPLIT, satellite imagery, and PM10 concentration measurements from the regional air quality monitoring network. The six case studies differed markedly in terms of burned area, vegetation composition, duration, and weather context. The results showed that the extent of the fire is likely not the most significant factor influencing the increase in PM10 observed in the days following the fires. The most pronounced increases in PM10 concentrations were recorded during the Isili and Montiferru fires, which differed in burned area but were similar in terms of fuel composition, dominated by forest and shrubland vegetation. These factors, together with favorable atmospheric conditions for plume transport and particulate matter deposition, likely contributed to the observed increases in PM10, including exceedances of WHO and national daily limit values. By contrast, Bonorva, Ittiri, and Borore showed limited or no clear accumulation of PM10, despite large burned areas in some cases. These findings suggest that the effects of wildfires on air quality in the Mediterranean region can be influenced by several features, such as meteorological conditions, biomass burned, area burned, severity and intensity of fires. Furthermore, the observed exceedance of WHO thresholds highlights the need to integrate public health considerations into wildfire risk management in the Mediterranean basin.

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