How fire history, fire supression practices and climate change affect wildfire regimes in Mediterranean landscapes
Brotons, Lluís (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Aquilué, Núria (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Cáceres Ainsa, Miquel de (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Fortin, Marie-Josée (University of Toronto. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology)
Fall, Andrew (Simon Fraser University. School of Resources and Environmental Management)

Date:	2013
Abstract:	Available data show that future changes in global change drivers may lead to an increasing impact of fires on terrestrial ecosystems worldwide. Yet, fire regime changes in highly humanised fire-prone regions are difficult to predict because fire effects may be heavily mediated by human activities We investigated the role of fire suppression strategies in synergy with climate change on the resulting fire regimes in Catalonia (north-eastern Spain). We used a spatially-explicit fire-succession model at the landscape level to test whether the use of different firefighting opportunities related to observed reductions in fire spread rates and effective fire sizes, and hence changes in the fire regime. We calibrated this model with data from a period with weak firefighting and later assess the potential for suppression strategies to modify fire regimes expected under different levels of climate change. When comparing simulations with observed fire statistics from an eleven-year period with firefighting strategies in place, our results showed that, at least in two of the three sub-regions analysed, the observed fire regime could not be reproduced unless taking into account the effects of fire suppression. Fire regime descriptors were highly dependent on climate change scenarios, with a general trend, under baseline scenarios without fire suppression, to large-scale increases in area burnt. Fire suppression strategies had a strong capacity to compensate for climate change effects. However, strong active fire suppression was necessary to accomplish such compensation, while more opportunistic fire suppression strategies derived from recent fire history only had a variable, but generally weak, potential for compensation of enhanced fire impacts under climate change. The concept of fire regime in the Mediterranean is probably better interpreted as a highly dynamic process in which the main determinants of fire are rapidly modified by changes in landscape, climate and socioeconomic factors such as fire suppression strategies.
Grants:	Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia CGL2011-29539/BOS Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia CGL2008-05506-C02-01/BOS Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación CSD2008-00040 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2009/BP-B-00342
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Fire ; Climate change ; Mediterranean landscape
Published in:	PloS one, Vol. 8, Issue 5 (May 2013) , p. e62392, ISSN 1932-6203

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0062392
PMID: 23658726

12 p, 1.9 MB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Experimental sciences > CREAF (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles