Wildfires as incidences of ecological crime: A comprehensive examination of the wildfires in İzmir city-region between 25 June and 5 July 2025

Abstract

The wildfires that occurred in İzmir city-region between 25 June and 5 July, 2025, are particularly noteworthy due to their media coverage. The aim of this paper is to contextualize these wildfires by adopting a socio-ecological perspective that categorizes the role of humans at different levels. It also develops a framework to present the damage they cause, together with their ignition points, while considering the crime dimension of each wildfire. For this purpose, each wildfire is contextualized with the support of not o nly remote sensing (RS) data providing the probable ignition points and exposing the damage caused by the wildfires in  terms of total area burned, but also the news revealed in the media facilitating the elucidation of crime dimension of the wildfires. In terms of RS data, while Sentinel 2 data is used for the delineation of wildfire zones via ΔNBR, MODIS and VIIRS data is used for the specification of ignition points and the delimitation of fire isochrones. The delimitation of the wildfire zones exposed that a total of 29,612.73 ha was burned in İzmir city-region during the period studied. The majority of the wildfires whose causes are known stem from urban activities and the problems with the electricity transmission infrastructure are particularly responsible for 25% of all wildfire incidences. Overall, the paper reveals that co-employment of RS data with the news exposed in the media, on the one hand, provides stronger evidence about the ignition location and causes of the wildfires to unveil the suspects, and on the other hand, makes it possible to track the spread direction of each wildfire so that some precautions can be taken in both management of forest areas and spatial planning for preve ntion of similar kinds of incidences in the future. What is particularly evident from this inquiry into the contextualization of wildfire incidences and their crime dimension is that without a shift to a biophilic ontology it is not possible to tame the Anthropocene.