Abstract
Forest fires are permanent seasonal threats that have been accentuated in recent years by climate change. Taking this problem into consideration, forest policies must propose courses of action to mitigate the effects of fires on ecosystems and their surrounding population. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness silvicultural treatments of Pinus pinea stands at the polewood stage have on potential fire behavior. Evaluating fire behavior requires a characterization of the fuel at its two levels: surface and crown layers. Given the temporal costs of the latter characterization, field inventory has yielded an equation from which canopy fuel load can be obtained without cutting trees. A complete characterization of the fuel allows for a prediction of fire behavior for each silvicultural treatment and whether or not it will be virulent enough to transfer into crown fire. Polewood stands of P.pinea are susceptible to crown fires because canopy base height is usually overrun by dense and flammable undergrowth. Crown treatments, pruning and crown thinning do not contribute in themselves to eliminating crown fire susceptibility. This study raises the need for joint surface and crown fuel treatments to ensure the effectiveness of extinction efforts. Given current budgetary constraints, fuel treatments are limited to 23.40% of the study area for mitigating possible crown fire impacts on forested area that have a future leading role in the socioeconomic development of surrounding populations.
Highlights
Mediterranean forest management devotes much of its efforts in seeking a diversified production of their resources
In Spain, the Pinus pinea occupies an area of 475,000 ha (Montero et al, 2004), demonstrating a high ecological and socioeconomic vulnerability to the greatest disturbance in the Mediterranean area: forest fires. This susceptibility has been accentuated by the impact of climate change which has changed the frequency and severity of forest fires (Flannigan and Corns, 2000; Flannigan et al, 2001, 2006; Millán et al, 2005), increasing the fire impacts either directly or indirectly (Molina, 2008)
Following the evaluation of the effects of various treatments on crown fire behavior, we propose a joint surface-crown fuel treatment, similar to that of «stand 2», at landscape scale, so as to provide safe workplaces for firefighting forces and to increase the chances of fire suppression success
Summary
Mediterranean forest management devotes much of its efforts in seeking a diversified production of their resources. In Spain, the Pinus pinea occupies an area of 475,000 ha (Montero et al, 2004), demonstrating a high ecological and socioeconomic vulnerability to the greatest disturbance in the Mediterranean area: forest fires. This susceptibility has been accentuated by the impact of climate change which has changed the frequency and severity of forest fires (Flannigan and Corns, 2000; Flannigan et al, 2001, 2006; Millán et al, 2005), increasing the fire impacts either directly (tangible assets) or indirectly (environmental services and landscape goods) (Molina, 2008). Forest fires are a complex process that varies over time and space because of weather, topography and vegetation (Heikkilä et al, 2007). Crown fires are a serious problem for forest management because fire suppression efforts are much more complex than surface fires due to fire-line intensity, spread rate, smoke production, spotting and entropy energy (Rodríguez y Silva, 2009)
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