Recurrent wildfires across the Mediterranean region are changing its landscape

France 24

2 days ago

After sizzling in an early summer heatwave, large swaths of the Mediterranean region are ablaze.
Parts of southern France, Greece, Turkey, and Syria have been engulfed in flames in the past few weeks. The city of Marseille is still battling an enormous fire that scorched homes on its outskirts and forced the closure of its airport. Flames disrupted the local economies of the Greek islands of Crete and Evia and forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes. Acres of land were left charred in Turkey's Izmir province, with smoke visible from satellite imagery. And after years of continued political instability, Syria is faced with uncontrollable wildfires that have burned more than three percent of the country's forest cover.
These events are part of a broader pattern. The Mediterranean has always been a fire-prone region due to its hot, dry summers and quickly flammable vegetation. But climate change has significantly amplified the occurrences and severity of wildfire. The European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) said Tuesday that over 214,000 hectares have burned in wildfires across the EU in 2025 so far – more than double the average for this time of year over the past two decades. This escalation is directly linked to climate change, which has made heat-induced wildfires much more likely in the Mediterranean basin.
There is no question that without drastic preventative action, summer wildfires will continue to scorch the region. Overall, the number of wildfires are predicted to rise by 50 percent by 2100 – making the flames spreading across the continent not an anomaly, but an inevitability that experts say we are not yet prepared for.
A land forged in fire
Wildfires have always been part of the life-cycle of the Mediterranean ecosystem. In fact, some species like the plant family Cistaceae have evolved to coexist and even thrive within the summer flames.
These unassuming flowering shrubs known as "rock-roses" – occasionally, "children of fire" – are distributed throughout the Mediterranean basin. Their seeds reflect the hardiness of the region in which they thrive: as the dry summer vegetation falls prey to fire, the Cistaceae seed's impermeable coating breaks open and a tiny shoot is born from the soil. Many species of flora in the region do not germinate until fire ignites.
But these adaptations are dependent on predictability. Wildfires in the region are evolving – they start earlier in the year and last longer, burning through the native olive trees and Mediterranean shrubbery with increased speed and intensity. Not even the hardy seeds of the Cistaceae will survive through such aggressive fire.
This also means that ecosystems will take longer to recover and are likely being fundamentally altered by the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires. The land tends to stay dry for longer and the rising aridity may be converting Mediterranean forests into open shrubland. Studies suggest that water stress hampers post-fire recovery, potentially pushing ecosystems past a tipping point where forests cannot reestablish, giving way to more flammable shrub species that recover quickly after fires. Depending on the species, vegetation needs between 25 to 250 years to reach maturity. So after an intense wildfire, new vegetation is smaller, younger, drier – and by extension, more flammable – than before.
Ferocious forest fires can also strip away the protective plants that hold topsoil together with their roots. When they burn, this plant-supporting top layer of soil, rich in organic matter and nutrients, erodes. The soil becomes less fertile, leading to further biodiversity loss and contributing to desertification, a growing concern in the Mediterranean.
Adapting to a new normal
The Mediterranean is condemned to bear a disproportionate burden from climate change as it warms 20 percent faster than the global average, according to the UN. The cultural identity of Mediterranean communities is tied to their landscapes, which support livelihoods through agriculture and tourism (30 percent of world tourism). Just as the Mediterranean landscape evolves, so must its people.
About 60,000 forest fires rage through the EU each year – most of them in the Mediterranean region – claiming lives, torching homes and destroying crops. An extraordinary half a million hectares is burnt repeatedly, year after year, causing economic losses of over €2 billion. According to a European Central Bank official, extreme weather events such as heatwaves, floods and wildfires could wipe as much off Eurozone GDP in the next five years as the global financial crisis or the Covid-19 pandemic.
With a population of over 500 million people in the Mediterranean, within and beyond the EU, curbing the ecological and economic impact of wildfires is of critical importance to local decisionmakers.
"The Mediterranean is also currently a hotspot of social and political instability, experiencing economic losses, conflicts and significant suffering of populations; even if the causal links with climate change cannot be demonstrated, expected future changes are so great that the risk of increased instability is significant and will require major adaptation efforts," Wolfgang Cramer, a specialist of Mediterranean ecology at France's National Centre for Scientific Research, writes in The Conversation.
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Strengthening local capacity to respond to wildfires, through early warning systems and evacuation plans, is essential to safeguard both lives and cultural heritage. Thousands of people have been saved across the region because of timely warnings and preparedness.
Adapting to the recurrent wildfires will certainly mean investing time and money in prevention. Experts say that planned reforestation, building climate-resistant cities, and adapting farming practices to climate conditions could prevent future fires to an extent, or at least reduce the damage.
The long-term outlook for the Mediterranean region under the influence of climate change and wildfires suggests a new normal of altered landscapes. Change is inevitable, and it will have a ripple effect on various species of flora and fauna, as well as the cultural heritage of the people so inextricably linked with the land.