Useful Life of Prescribed Fires in a Southern Mediterranean Basin: An Application to Pinus pinaster Stands in the Sierra Morena Range

Juan Ramón Molina,Macarena Ortega,Francisco Rodríguez Y Silva

doi:10.3390/f12040486

Abstract

Prescribed fire is a globally relevant fuel treatment for surface fuel management and wildfire hazard reduction. However, Mediterranean ecosystems are adapted to low and moderate fires; hence, the useful life of prescribed fires is limited. Useful life is defined as the effective rotation length of prescribed fires to mitigate fire spread based on critical surface intensity for crown combustion. In this sense, the useful life of a prescribed fire focuses on surface fuel dynamics and its potential fire behavior. In Pinus pinaster stands, the useful life can be established between 0 and 4 years. Canopy base height, time elapsed from the burning, postfire precipitation, and fine fuel moisture content during the burning were identified as the most important variables in postburn fuel dynamics. Other stand characteristics and postfire precipitation can improve the fine fuel and live fuel dynamics models. Our findings support prescribed fires as an effective fuel treatment in the medium term for forest fire prevention, according to stand characteristics and burning implementation conditions. In this sense, forest managers can use the proposed decision tree to identify the useful life of each prescribed fire based on fine fuel moisture content during burning implementation.

Highlights

Paul-Antoine SantoniLand-use changes, the abandonment of traditional forest uses, and climate change are increasing the frequency of large forest fires [1] as well as their economic impacts and suppression costs [2]
Note: “TFL” is the total fuel load (Mg/ha); “T” is the time elapsed from the burning; “P” is the number of days with heavy precipitation in the following 6 months after the burning; “canopy base height (CBH)”
Evolution from the first year depends on CBH, stand density (SD), and targets would be achieved with fine fuel moisture content (FFMC) ranging from 9% to 12%, according to our findings found a bigger number of needles during the first postburn months, which and TFL reduction above 80%, which is generally established in the burn windows of the seems to corroborate model for the firstand year

Summary

Introduction

Paul-Antoine SantoniLand-use changes, the abandonment of traditional forest uses, and climate change are increasing the frequency of large forest fires [1] as well as their economic impacts and suppression costs [2]. Fuel treatments are aimed at surface fuel reduction and the increase of vertical distance between surface fuel and canopy base height [4]. Some authors [7,8,9,10] have pointed to prescribed fires as a promising tool to mitigate wildfire impacts in forests and settlements. In this sense, an upward trend in prescribed fires has begun due to its low cost and additional firefighter training [9]. Prescribed fires can be an effective treatment for fuel load reduction in Southern Europe, the actual application of this technique can be rather reduced in size, and, its effectiveness in relation to large fire suppression and confinement is limited [11,12]

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