Relationships among number of fires, total area burnt, and large fires in southern France, eastern Spain and Portugal

It is frequently assumed that a reduction in the number of fires will result in a reduction of the area burned, but few studies have proven this fact. In the present study we confirm such relationships, but being a power fit with b<1, the increase in number of fires did not imply a proportional increase in the number of fires. However, the proportion of area burnt by large fires decreased with number of fires. Implications of these results for forest fire policies are briefly discussed.