Abstract
This paper explores the role of landscape planning as a tool for rural fire prevention. It presents a methodology for a fire resilient and sustainable landscape model (FIRELAN) that articulates the ecological and cultural components in a suitable and multifunction land-use plan. FIRELAN is a conceptual and ecologically based model that recognizes river basin’ land morphology, microclimate and species combustibility as the fundamental factors that determine fire behavior and landscape resilience, along with the ecological network (EN) for achieving ecological sustainability of the landscape. The model is constituted by the FIRELAN Network and the Complementary Areas. This network ensures the effectiveness of discontinuities in the landscape with less combustible land-uses. It also functions as a fire-retardant technique and protection of wildland-urban interface (WUI). This model is applied to municipalities from Portugal’s center region, a simplified landscape severely damaged by recurrent rural fires. The results show that land-use and tree species composition should change drastically, whereas about 72% of the case study needs transformation actions. This requires a significant increase of native or archaeophytes species, agricultural areas, landscape discontinuities and the restoration of biodiversity in Natura 2000 areas. The EN components are 79% of the FIRELAN N area, whose implementation ensures soil and water conservation, biodiversity and habitats. This paper contributes to the discussion of the Portuguese rural fires planning framework.
Highlights
Large-scale rural fires are a worldwide problem that has been studied in the most fire-prone regions of the world, such as North America [1], Australia [2] and Europe [3], with several methodological approaches [4]
The fire resilient and sustainable landscape (FIRELAN) model was applied to an intermunicipal case study, which comprises three municipalities from the center region of Portugal: Pedrógão Grande, Castanheira de
This paper explores the role of landscape planning as an important tool for rural fires prevention
Summary
Large-scale rural fires are a worldwide problem that has been studied in the most fire-prone regions of the world, such as North America [1], Australia [2] and Europe [3], with several methodological approaches [4]. In Europe, the Mediterranean region has been the most affected area by rural fires in the last decades [5]. Forest Action Plan (2007–2011) [8] aimed to optimize the multifunctional role of the forest through the implementation of forest fire protection plans. Even though these strategy principles were still valid, the 2013 EU Forest Strategy settled for a more coherent and proactive approach to forest policy [9]. As a goal from the 2030 Agenda for a Sustainable Development [10], these policies are foreseen under the European Green
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