Forest Fires by Nergis Aşar

Forest fires is an important problem that affects both the natural and built environment as well as the inhabitants of these areas in various ways. Forest fires, which can occur as a result of natural systems or human activities, have started to be seen more intensely in different geographies in recent years. Considering the urgency of the issue and its impact on lives and societies, it is a necessity to examine and communicate this problem in detail.
This visualization aims to illustrate the change of the state of forest fires, over the years, to inform the public about its urgency. The used data was sourced from European Forest Fire Information System therefore the subject countries were the countries in Europe. The examined time interval of the related data is between the years of 2013-2022. The visualized countries were selected based on the total amount of burned area between the indicated years. As the result, this visualization examines the fires of the twenty European countries with the highest amount of burned forest area in total between the indicated years.
Visualization consists of three main parameters with different visual encodings: the number of fires, which was visualized with the height of triangles; the amount of burned area which was shown with the size of the circles and the percentage of the amount of burned area to the country area which was indicated with the color of the circles. In addition, semi-circles were used on the left and bottom parts of the image in order easy comprehension of the total burned areas of the countries and the total amount of burned area each year.