Impact of Depopulation on Forest Fires in Spain: Primary School Distribution as a Potential Socioeconomic Indicator

Socioeconomic factors are increasingly considered in the study of forest fires. However, there is a gap in the literature on the possible relationship between basic services and infrastructures such as small rural schools and forest fires. Population decline in rural areas is leading to an increase in forest fire risk and social vulnerability to forest fires due to the abandonment of traditional agroforestry practices and the expansion of unmanaged forest canopy. In addition, rural schools are supposed to make rural municipalities livable and promote the people’s sense of community. In parallel, there is controversy over the closure of small local schools in sparsely populated rural areas worldwide. Our study identified that the forest area burned in the province of Avila (Central Spain), during the period 1996 to 2023, was higher in municipalities without rural primary schools. The presence of rural schools was as statistically significant as the influence of orographic variations of the territory, the number of incipient fires, and the reduction of population density during the same period. Our work contributes to highlighting the potential links between the decline of essential services in rural areas and the increase in forest fire risk, to urge policymakers to take a collaborative and holistic view.