5. Portugal

5.1 Invasive species


5.2 Fires


On 9 August 2016 a fire, allegedly by arson, started at the S. Roque parish in Madeira that quickly spread throughout the region of Southern Madeira and to its capital Funchal.
The fire was controlled: four casualties were recorded and a thousand of people displaced.

5.3 Floods and lanslides


The most affected areas in Portugal are Porto, Vila Nova de Gaia and Peso da Régua.
Lisbon is the Country that had more occurrences of floods and landslides in the last 150 years.
From 1865 until 2015, the capital has registered 56 landslides that caused 32 dead, 125 evacuated
and 402 homeless

5.4 Earthquakes and eruptions

Currently, the earthquakes in Portugal occur with great frequency but low magnitude. It is
likely that, in the future, we may come to have an earthquake as severe as what occurred in the past.



In continental Portugal there are no cases of active volcanism besides thermal springs (secondary volcanism) that are pretty common. However, there are volcanic events in the Azores islands. That's because they’re volcanic islands and 9 of the volcanoes that formed them are still active.
Submarine eruptions are not rare and there are
p l e n t y o f c a s e s o f secondary volcanism on
the islands like fumaroles or thermal springs.



The Capelinhos eruption

This is the most intense volcanic eruption in Portugal. It occurred in Faial, one of the islands of the Azores archipelago on 27th September 1953. This eruption was of the explosive type characterized
by the big quantities of pyroclastic material (varying from rocks to dust) and gas released. Following a 2 day intense seismic period with more than 200 earthquakes, of an intensity not exceeding V of the Mercalli intensity scale.
There were a lot of buildings affected: broken windows, tiles falling from roofs. Cultivated fields were covered with a thick layer of ash.However, there were no victims. People were forced to migrate
significantly between 1957 and 1960.