On the other hand, new civil protection challenges arise in localized areas and periods

of the year, from an increasing pressure brought by mountain tourism. Preparedness is becoming Icotinib a core issue where the wildland–urban interface is being expanded, and new strategies have to be considered, along with actual impacts of fires on the ecosystem services, especially within the perspective of integrating fire and erosion risk management. We gratefully acknowledge the Joint Research Centre, European Commission, for providing forest fires data (yearly burnt area) accessible from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS). They have been used for calculating statistics about the incidence of forest fires in the Alpine Nintedanib mw region during last decades. “
“In 2003, an editorial in the journal Nature ( Nature editorial, 2003) proclaimed that human activity has created an Anthropogenic Earth, and that we now lived in the Anthropocene, an epoch where human–landscape interactions alter the Earth morphology, ecosystems and processes ( Ellis, 2011, Zalasiewicz et al., 2008, Zalasiewicz et al., 2011, Tarolli et al., 2013, Tarolli, 2014, Tarolli et al., 2014a and Tarolli et al., 2014b). One of the most important human domination of land systems is the creation of the reclamation and drainage networks that have a key role in agricultural and environmental sustainability, and can transform

landscapes and shape history ( Earle and Doyle, 2008). Following the land-use changes, drainage networks faced deep alterations due to urbanization and soil consumption ( Cazorzi et al., 2013), but also due to demographic pressure ( Fumagalli, 1976, Hallam, 1961 and Millar and Hatcher, 1978),

and changes in technological innovation ( Magnusson, 2001 and van Dam, 2001), and agricultural techniques. At the same time drainage networks faced an under-investment in their provision and maintenance ( Scheumann and Freisem, 2001) with insufficient evacuation of water runoff in large parts of the reclaimed areas ( Curtis and Campopiano, 2012), and they became crucial in the control of flood generations ( Gallart et al., 1994, Voltz et al., 1998, Marofi, 1999, Moussa et al., 2002, Evrard et al., 2007, Pinter et al., 2006, Bronstert et al., 2001, Pfister et al., 2004, Savenije, Isotretinoin 1995, Wheater, 2006 and Palmer and Smith, 2013). In earlier times and with less available technology, land drainage and land use was largely determined by the function that could be performed by the natural soil. However, in the course of the last century this relation between soil draining functions and land use has been lost to a certain extent ( Scalenghe and Ajmone-Marsan, 2009), and numerous researches underlined how land use changes altered the local hydrological characteristics ( Bronstert et al., 2001, Brath et al., 2006, Camorani et al., 2005, Heathwaite et al., 1989, Heathwaite et al.