Abstract
Wildland fire is an important feature of the Mediterranean Basin. Past fire incidence has been limited by landscape diversity and the intensity of biomass use. Fire activity and the meteorological component of fire danger have increased during the last decades, but the fire regime modification was primarily fuel-driven, i.e. caused by changes in land cover and land use. Fire-smart forests and landscapes are resistant to fire spread and resilient to its occurrence. In cultural landscapes where fires are seldom allowed to spread "fire smartness" is attained through proactive management by either treating fuels in fire-prone vegetation types or decreasing the importance of those vegetation types in the landscape. The presentation overviews these subjects as they relate to Mediterranean Europe and discusses them in the frame of climate change. Fire-smart landscapes are obtained by area-wide fuel treatments and by fuel type conversion, rather than by fuel isolation. The spatial features of fuel management are critical, as random patterns can mitigate the effects of wildfire locally but have no impact on its growth. Proactive management should concentrate on expanding (i) less flammable forest types, and (ii) vegetation types that are resilient regardless of flammability, the latter being the preferred option.
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Fernandes, P. Creating “fire-smart” forest stands and landscapes. Nat Prec (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/npre.2011.6245.1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/npre.2011.6245.1