Using unplanned fires to help supressing future large fires in Mediterranean forests
Regos Sanz, Adrián (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Retana Alumbreros, Javier (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Biologia Animal, de Biologia Vegetal i d'Ecologia)
Aquilué, Núria (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Cáceres Ainsa, Miquel de (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Brotons, Lluís (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)

Data:	2014
Resum:	Despite the huge resources invested in fire suppression, the impact of wildfires has considerably increased across the Mediterranean region since the second half of the 20th century. Modulating fire suppression efforts in mild weather conditions is an appealing but hotly-debated strategy to use unplanned fires and associated fuel reduction to create opportunities for suppression of large fires in future adverse weather conditions. Using a spatially-explicit fire-succession model developed for Catalonia (Spain), we assessed this opportunistic policy by using two fire suppression strategies that reproduce how firefighters in extreme weather conditions exploit previous fire scars as firefighting opportunities. We designed scenarios by combining different levels of fire suppression efficiency and climatic severity for a 50-year period (2000-2050). An opportunistic fire suppression policy induced large-scale changes in fire regimes and decreased the area burnt under extreme climate conditions, but only accounted for up to 18-22% of the area to be burnt in reference scenarios. The area suppressed in adverse years tended to increase in scenarios with increasing amounts of area burnt during years dominated by mild weather. Climate change had counterintuitive effects on opportunistic fire suppression strategies. Climate warming increased the incidence of large fires under uncontrolled conditions but also indirectly increased opportunities for enhanced fire suppression. Therefore, to shift fire suppression opportunities from adverse to mild years, we would require a disproportionately large amount of area burnt in mild years. We conclude that the strategic planning of fire suppression resources has the potential to become an important cost-effective fuel-reduction strategy at large spatial scale. We do however suggest that this strategy should probably be accompanied by other fuel-reduction treatments applied at broad scales if large-scale changes in fire regimes are to be achieved, especially in the wider context of climate change.
Ajuts:	Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia CGL2011-29539/BOS Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia CSD2008-00040
Drets:	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.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Matèria:	Unplanned fire ; Mediterranean forest ; Fire supression
Publicat a:	PloS one, Vol. 9, Issue 4 (April 2014) , p. e94906, ISSN 1932-6203

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0094906
PMID: 24727853

10 p, 1.2 MB

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