Relationships Between Fire and Protected Areas: A Mixed Methods Approach for Mozambique

This mixed methods research aims to examine the effects of some physical and human drivers on the occurrence of burned areas due to wildfires in the context of Mozambique, with particular consideration of protected areas. Mozambique provides a sub-/tropical developing country context with a rich recent history, where most of the population relies on functioning ecosystem services. The research aims to provide understanding of aspects of the wildfire system as a basis for informing strategies for fire and protected area management and further research. Exploratory data analyses and logistic regressions (on matched) physical and human variables derived from remotely sensed data, predict that nationally, protected area pixels are more likely to be burned. Secondly, this is also the case for the protected areas Niassa Special Reserve and Gorongosa National Park, whilst pixels within Limpopo National Park are less likely to be burned. Thirdly, by linking results from the quantitative analyses with qualitative results from data collected in Gorongosa National Park in 2012, the wildfire systems at the local context was examined through the relationships of the stakeholders, through issues such as land tenure, poverty and conflict. And lastly, any attempt to pick up on potential signals in the burned outcome due to general differences due to climatic, political, natural disaster events, in two time periods (2001-2006 and 2010-2015) have not been attributable to any differences.