Fostering Carbon Credits to Finance Wildfire Risk Reduction Forest Management in Mediterranean Landscapes

Fermín Alcasena,Cristina Vega-García,Aitor Ameztegui,Alan Ager,Michele Salis,Pere Gelabert,Marcos Rodrigues,Teresa Cervera

doi:10.3390/land10101104

Abstract

Despite the need for preserving the carbon pools in fire-prone southern European landscapes, emission reductions from wildfire risk mitigation are still poorly understood. In this study, we estimated expected carbon emissions and carbon credits from fuel management projects ongoing in Catalonia (Spain). The planning areas encompass about 1000 km2 and represent diverse fire regimes and Mediterranean forest ecosystems. We first modeled the burn probability assuming extreme weather conditions and historical fire ignition patterns. Stand-level wildfire exposure was then coupled with fuel consumption estimates to assess expected carbon emissions. Finally, we estimated treatment cost-efficiency and carbon credits for each fuel management plan. Landscape-scale average emissions ranged between 0.003 and 0.070 T CO2 year−1 ha−1. Fuel treatments in high emission hotspots attained reductions beyond 0.06 T CO2 year−1 per treated ha. Thus, implementing carbon credits could potentially finance up to 14% of the treatment implementation costs in high emission areas. We discuss how stand conditions, fire regimes, and treatment costs determine the treatment cost-efficiency and long-term carbon-sink capacity. Our work may serve as a preliminary step for developing a carbon-credit market and subsidizing wildfire risk management programs in low-revenue Mediterranean forest systems prone to extreme wildfires.

Highlights

Carbon emissions from fires in European countries, and Mediterranean areas, in particular, represent about 4.03 Tg C per year [1,2]
Very high aBP reductions in large, treated patches did not necessarily produce a significant shade effect in the adjacent lands if the polygons represent a fire sink area. We found this fire-sink effect in the large strategic management points (SMPs) of central planning area 5, where the aBP footprint reduction in neighboring regions (Figure 6) was minimal compared to the treated areas and emission reduction (Figure 5)
Forest management works developing wildfire risk reduction plans have substantially increased in recent years [9,81,82], but the emission reduction effects are still largely unknown

Summary

Introduction

Carbon emissions from fires in European countries, and Mediterranean areas, in particular, represent about 4.03 Tg C per year [1,2]. A few extreme fires account for the bulk of burned areas and carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere [3,4] These are extreme escaped fires that overwhelm firefighting capacity, and the containment is restricted to strategic locations in backing and flanking fire spread areas [5,6]. This is the reason why recent studies advocate for a comprehensive long-term solution to better coexist with fire, and forest fuel management is emerging as a fundamental strategy complementing fire suppression and ignition prevention in populated areas [7,8,9]. The most frequent treatments at the landscape scale consist of fuel break networks dividing the landscape into large planning areas, systematic buffer clearings within the wildland–

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