Prescribed burning in southern Europe: developing fire management in a dynamic landscape
Paulo Fernandes,Paulo Fernandes,G. Matt Davies,Davide Ascoli,Cristina Fernández,Francisco Moreira,Eric Rigolot,Cathelijne R. Stoof,José A. Vega,D. M. Molina +9 more
TLDR
The adoption of prescribed burning in the Mediterranean region has been slow, uneven, and inconsistent, and its development is constrained by cultural and socioeconomic factors as well as specific factors related to demography, land use, and landscape structure as discussed by the authors.Abstract:
Mediterranean landscapes are in a state of flux due to the impacts of changing land-use patterns and climate. Fuel–weather interactions determine that large, severe wildfires are increasingly common. Prescribed burning in southern Europe is therefore justified by the need to manage fire-prone vegetation types and maintain cultural landscapes that provide a range of ecosystem services. Prescribed fire has neutral or positive effects on soils and biodiversity, in contrast to wildfires, which can be extremely damaging. However, the limited extent of current applications are unlikely to reduce wildfire hazard or carbon emissions. Adoption of prescribed burning in the Mediterranean region has been slow, uneven, and inconsistent, and its development is constrained by cultural and socioeconomic factors as well as by specific factors related to demography, land use, and landscape structure. Sustainable fire management requires expansion of managers' ability to use prescribed burning, a varied response to unplanned fires, and modified regulation of burning associated with traditional agricultural land uses.read more
Citations
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Global trends in wildfire and its impacts: perceptions versus realities in a changing world.
Stefan H. Doerr,Cristina Santín +1 more
TL;DR: Global predictions for increased fire under a warming climate highlight the already urgent need for a more sustainable coexistence with fire and the data evaluation presented here aims to contribute to this by reducing misconceptions and facilitating a more informed understanding of the realities of global fire.
Journal ArticleDOI
Wildfire management in Mediterranean-type regions: paradigm change needed
Francisco Moreira,Francisco Moreira,Davide Ascoli,Hugh D. Safford,Mark A. Adams,José M. Moreno,José M. C. Pereira,Filipe X. Catry,Juan J. Armesto,William J. Bond,Mauro E. González,Thomas Curt,Nikos Koutsias,Lachlan McCaw,Owen Price,Juli G. Pausas,Eric Rigolot,Scott L. Stephens,Çağatay Tavşanoğlu,V. Ramón Vallejo,Brian W. van Wilgen,Gavriil Xanthopoulos,Paulo Fernandes +22 more
TL;DR: The authors argue that current wildfire management policies in Mediterranean-type climate regions are destined to fail and recommend that policy and expenditures be rebalanced between suppression and mitigation of the negative impacts of fire.
Journal ArticleDOI
Effects of prescribed fires on soil properties: A review.
TL;DR: It is concluded that prescribed fires clearly constitute a disturbance on the environment, but most of the studies reviewed report a good recovery and their effects could be less pronounced than those of wildfires because of the limited soil heating and lower fire intensity and severity.
Journal ArticleDOI
Fire effects on soils: the human dimension.
Cristina Santín,Stefan H. Doerr +1 more
TL;DR: The effects of fire on soils as influenced by human interference are explored and the complex interactions between human-induced land cover changes, climate warming and fire dynamics are explored.
Journal ArticleDOI
Tamm Review: Shifting global fire regimes: Lessons from reburns and research needs
TL;DR: This article reviewed published studies on reburns in fire-adapted ecosystems of the world, including temperate forests of North America, semi-arid forests and rangelands, tropical and subtropical forests, grasslands and savannas, and Mediterranean ecosystems.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
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Changes in land-use/land-cover patterns in Italy and their implications for biodiversity conservation
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Journal ArticleDOI
A review of prescribed burning effectiveness in fire hazard reduction
Paulo Fernandes,H. Botelho +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate the hazard reduction potential of prescribed fire in the presence of active prescribed burning programs in forest and shrubland and highlight the need for more properly designed experiments addressing this question.
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