Evaluation of the flammability of forest species for fire management in wildland urban interface areas of Brazil

Abstract

Classification of forest fuels according to their flammability is an essential component of fire risk assessment in the context of forest fire management planning. Surveys on the flammability of forest fuels are useful for fire management because they provide information on the reaction of individual fuels in heating a fire, make it possible to classify different plant species within an ecosystem in terms of fire hazard, and help with selection of suitable species to reduce the danger of fires in reforestation. The flammability characteristics of vegetation have been fundamental in recent methodologies for risk assessment of forest fires in several regions of the world. In addition, knowledge of how species differ in their flammability characteristics is necessary to draw up lists of recommended plants for urban and residential afforestation in wildland urban interface areas. In Brazil, there are no methodologies for classifying tree and shrub species according to the flammability characteristics of the vegetation. The choice of these species is made empirically, considering only the local experiences of vegetation specialists. This research aimed to consolidate in the country a methodology that has been adopted in several countries to characterize plant species according to the degree of flammability, facilitating the use of these species in protection activities against forest fires. The general objective of this research was to evaluate the flammability of native and exotic forest species from forest fragments and wildland urban interfaces (WUI) areas of Curitiba-PR and Gurupi-TO in Brazil, to support fire management planning in these environments. To achieve this objective, fifty-eight species were chosen from the fragment forests and wildland urban interfaces of Curitiba-PR and Gurupi-TO, Brazil, belonging to the southern and northern regions of Brazil, respectively, where forest activities are very important for the regional economy and to which fires cause significant damage. One of the analysis criteria for the selection of species were the morphological characteristics of the species. The selected species were submitted to flammability tests in the Forest Fire laboratories of the Federal University of Paraná and of the Environmental Monitoring and Fire Management Center (CEMAF) of the Federal University of Tocantins (Gurupi-TO), following the methodology proposed by Valette (1990) and Petriccione (2006). The results indicated that of the analysed species, 19% had low flammability (IF = 0), and therefore, have potential for use in fire prevention activities at the wildland urban interfaces areas of the cities of Curitiba and Gurupi.