2025
Martino Rogai, Gerard Alcoverro, Gianni Picchi. Trees, Forests. April 2025.
In the last decades the impact of wildfires on forest ecosystem and human assets has steadily increased. Forest operations can help to reduce the spread rate and intensity of wildfires by limiting the biomass available for combustion. Fuel removal is mainly done with preventive silviculture works which, in the Mediterranean basin, typically feature a negative economic balance. The introduction of small-sized forest machines may enhance efficiency and safety of such operations. The study compares the performance of the common motor-manual work system with an innovative machine performing both harvesting and forwarding of biomass. The study took place in a post-fire regenerated Pinus halepensis Mill. area with high fuel accumulation. Three plots were selected to represent the main development stages of this type of forest, respectively with a density of about 1700, 5000 and 9600 trees∙ha−1. The machine showed a clear advantage over the manual system with the lower and intermediate trees density, where the capacity to valorize the biomass reduced the overall balance per hectare respectively to 19% and 50% of the alternative. This allows to cover the whole operation with the local public subsidy, unlike the manual system. With the higher density, the overall balance is unfavorable for both work systems and different solutions should be tested.
Elena Górriz-Mifsud, Soazig Darnay, Marc Rovellada Ballesteross. Trees, Forests and People. June 2025.
To mitigate wildfire risk, fire-smart landscapes present a promising strategy, integrating fuel discontinuities through a mosaic of agricultural and forested areas. However, the role of farmers in enhancing wildfire resilience within this mosaic remains underexplored. This exploratory study in four European Mediterranean countries aims at unveiling the factors modulating wine growers’ wildfire risk perception, their related agency and demand for recognition. Our survey sample consisted of mainly rustic land managers (78 %), which often had also roles of wine producers (48 %), PDO (7.5 %) or winery (18 %) representatives, or wine experts (23 %). Portuguese respondents lead in ownership rates, with Spanish ones exhibiting larger average holdings. Our findings show the interlinkage between wine sector and wildfire risk management: wine growers influence the interface between woodlands and farmlands. Sixty-five percent of land managers were also forest owners, but only 25 % had a forest management plan. Catalan respondents rank higher in association membership, Spanish and Italian respondents tend to have more plans, and Italians are more likely to have sold wood. Approximately 24 % of respondents reported past wildfires within their property, and 32 % in their vicinity. Land managers reported a high wildfire concern (7.5/10), with Spanish respondents scoring higher (8.4) than Portuguese (6.5), French (6.1) and Italians (5.1). The closer experience of wildfires and owning also forests correlated with higher concern levels. Only one-quarter of land managers are aware of a fire prevention plan for their property, and among those pre-suppression measures dominate. Forty-five percent of respondents declared interest in financial support for implementing wildfire risk reduction measures, followed by technical support (39 %). French respondents were less keen to support. Over one-third-of the sample indicated interest in a fire-smart label in the marketable products to recognise the externality effect of fire risk reduction. Most respondents did not believe that would improve their sales, and 23 % reported excess of brands. These results call for: i) targeted information and financial mechanisms to vineyard managers to align with fire risk reduction measures and engage in forest management, and ii) co-design of any fire-smart produce label to ensure effectiveness and acceptance.
Dagm Abate, Brigite Botequim, Susete Marques, Constantino Lagoa, Juan Guerra Hernández, Geerten Hengeveld, Marjanke Hoogstra-Klein, José G. Borges. Forest Ecosystems. March 2025.
Cultural ecosystem services (CES), which encompass recreational and aesthetic values, contribute to human well-being and yet are often underrepresented in forest management planning due to challenges in quantifying these services. This study introduces the Recreational and Aesthetic Values of Forested Landscapes (RAFL) index, a novel framework combining six measurable recreational and aesthetic components: Stewardship, Naturalness, Complexity, Visual Scale, Historicity, and Ephemera. The RAFL index was integrated into a Linear Programming (LP) Resource Capability Model (RCM) to assess trade-offs between CES and other ecosystem services, including timber production, wildfire resistance, and biodiversity. The approach was applied in a case study in Northern Portugal, comparing two forest management scenarios: Business as Usual (BAU), dominated by eucalyptus plantations, and an Alternative Scenario (ALT), focused on the conversion to native species: cork oak, chestnut, and pedunculate oak. Results revealed that the ALT scenario consistently achieved higher RAFL values, reflecting its potential to enhance CES, while also supporting higher biodiversity and wildfire resilience compared to the BAU scenario. Results highlighted further that management may maintain steady timber production and wildfire regulatory services while addressing concerns with CES. This study provides a replicable methodology for quantifying CES and integrating them into forest management frameworks, offering actionable insights for decision-makers. The findings highlight the effectiveness of the approach in designing landscape mosaics that provide CES while addressing the need to supply provisioning and regulatory ecosystem services.
Jordina Gili, Aina Maín, Barend L. van Drooge, Mar Viana. Environmental Pollution. January 2025.
Changes in climate and land-use have significantly increased both the frequency and intensity of wildland fires globally, exacerbating the potential for hazardous impacts on human health. A better understanding of particle exposure concentrations and scenarios is crucial for developing mitigation strategies to reduce the health risks. Here, PM2.5 and black carbon (BC) concentrations were monitored during wildland fires between 2022 and 2024, in fire-prone areas in Catalonia (NE Spain), by means of personal monitors (AirBeam2 and Micro-aethalometers AE51 and MA200). Results revealed that exposures to combustion aerosols (PM2.5 and BC) were significant and comparable during wildfires and prescribed burns (mean PM2.5 during wildfires = 152 μg/m3 vs. 110–145 μg/m3 for prescribed burns). Overall, BC/PM2.5 ratios showed a large variability as a function of the monitoring scenario, indicating varying contributions from mineral aerosols to the emissions mix originating from fire management and extinction tasks. Specifically, mop-up tasks (final extinction tasks involving stirring top soil using handheld tools) were identified as a significant contributor to PM2.5 exposures, with 1-min PM2.5 peak concentrations reaching up to 1190 μg/m3. These results may be especially valuable for emissions modelling. Source apportionment of multi-wavelength BC datasets provided deeper insights into emissions and their impact on exposure profiles: line operators (who control the fire perimeter) were predominantly exposed to biomass burning smoke (61%) when compared to BC from fossil-fuel combustion (= 39%), while torchers (in charge of initiating technical fires using fossil-fuel drip-torches) were predominantly exposed to (77% vs. 23%). These findings highlight the value of portable monitors in the assessment of wildfire emissions and impacts on human exposure and environment. The combination of these tools, reporting data in real-time and with high time-resolution, is key to the design and implementation of effective mitigation strategies for environmental and health concerns related to wildland fires.
Olivier Martin-Ducup, Jean-Luc Dupuy, Maxime Soma, Juan Guerra-Hernandez, Eva Marino, Paulo M. Fernandes, Ariadna Just, Jordi Corbera, Marion Toutchkov, Charlie Sorribas, Jerome Bock, Alexandre Piboule, Francesco Pirotti, François Pimont. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. March 2025.
Large-scale mapping of fuel load and fuel vertical distribution is essential for assessing fire danger, setting strategic goals and actions, and determining long-term resource needs. The Airborne LiDAR system can fulfil such goal by accurately capturing the three-dimensional arrangement of vegetation at regional and national scales. We developed a novel method to estimate multiple metrics of fuel load and vertical bulk density distribution for any type of vegetation. The approach uses Beer-Lambert law for inverting the ALS point cloud into vertical plant area density profiles, which are converted into vertical bulk density distribution profiles using species-specific plant traits. The approach is evaluated by comparing ALS-based vegetation profiles and fuel metrics with field-based data from southeastern France, Spain, and Portugal for a range of vegetation types. ALS-based and field-based vertical vegetation profiles were consistent. The range of values of fuel load metrics was also consistent with field data. Good correlations and low bias were attained for simple stratified structure with R² of 0.6, 0.42 and 0.68 and bias of -5 %, -2 % and -3.3 % for canopy base height, canopy fuel load, and canopy bulk density respectively. However, correlations were low for complex vertical structures. The use of species-specific plant traits appeared relevant by lowering the deviation between field and ALS-based values for most species. Our field-independent fuel metric estimation shows comparable performance to results in the literature based on classification approaches trained on field metrics, highlighting the generality of our direct approach. We demonstrated how our approach is more relevant than field data for defining vertical vegetation strata in complex forest structures. We showed an application of the methods by mapping multiple metrics at regional scale (6343 km²) such as canopy base height, fuel strata gap, and canopy and understory fuel loads. Our approach is adequate for feeding next generation models of wildfire risk assessment systems, enhanced by more flexible and accurate fuel data than the existing fuel typologies.
2024
Erico Kutchartt, José Ramón González-Olabarria, Antoni Trasobares, Núria Aquilué, Juan Guerra-Hernández, Leónia Nunes, Ana Catarina Sequeira, Brigite Botequim, Marius Hauglin, Palaiologos Palaiologou, Adrian Cardil, Martino Rogai, Vassil Vassilev, Francois Pimont, Olivier Martin-Ducup and Francesco Pirotti. Geo-Spatial Information Science. December 2024.
Erico Kutchartt, José Ramón González-Olabarria, Núria Aquilué, Jordi Garcia-Gonzalo, Antoni Trasobares, Brigite Botequim, Marius Hauglin, Palaiologos Palaiologou, Vassil Vassilev, Adrian Cardil, Miguel Ángel Navarrete, Christophe Orazio, Francesco Pirotti. Geomatica. December 2024.
Canopy fuels and surface fuel models, topographic features and other canopy attributes such as stand height and canopy cover, provide the necessary spatial datasets required by various fire behaviour modelling simulators. This is a technical note reporting on a pan-European fuel map server, highlighting the methods for the production and validation of canopy features, more specifically canopy fuels, and surface fuel models created for the European Union’s Horizon 2020 “FIRE-RES” project, as well as other related data derived from earth observation. The aim was to deliver a fuel cartography in a findable, accessible, interoperable and replicable manner as per F.A.I.R. guiding principles for research data stewardship. We discuss the technology behind sharing large raster datasets via web-GIS technologies and highlight advances and novelty of the shared data. Uncertainty maps related to the canopy fuel variables are also available to give users the expected reliability of the data. Users can view, query and download single layers of interest, or download the whole pan-European dataset. All layers are in raster format and co-registered in the same reference system, extent and spatial resolution (100 m). Viewing and downloading is available at all NUTS scales, ranging from country level (NUTS0) to province level (NUTS3), thus facilitating data management and access. The system was implemented using R for part of the processing and Google Earth Engine. The final app is openly available to the public for accessing the data at various scales.
Eduard Plana, Marta Serra, Annick Smeenk, Adrián Regos, Claudia Berchtold, Maria Huertas, Lola Fuentes, Antoni Trasobares, Julie Nicole Vinders, Conceição Colaço, José Antonio Bonet. Fire. November 2024.
Wildfire risk has been exacerbated across Europe by climate change favoring more damaging and severe wildfire events. This evolving wildfire risk context interacts with a broad landscape of EU policies including those on nature conservation, forestry, bioeconomy or climate and energy, all of which may increase or reduce fire hazard and the level of exposure and vulnerability of the values at risk. Coherently addressed, policies may support wildfire disaster risk management synergistically while reducing potential dysfunctions. This research conducts a content analysis of EU policies and initiatives under the European Green Deal with respect to integrated wildfire risk management and related nature-based solutions. The results show that a consistent EU policy framework to address wildfire risk reduction in a synergic way exists, with no major conflicts in the policy design. Nevertheless, better guidance on fire-smart land management practices and the conceptualization of wildfire-related nature-based solutions may enhance a more coherent policy implementation. Additional suggestions around the legal status of wildfire protection and ‘whole of government’ governance frameworks are discussed. Notably, within the laws, policies and initiatives analyzed, the beneficial side of fire addressed by integrated fire management is either missing or not explicitly mentioned, although it is considered in policy-related supporting guidelines.
Erico Kutchartt, José Ramón González-Olabarria, Núria Aquilué, Antoni Trasobares, and Francesco Pirotti. The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. November 2024.
This study presents results regarding the estimation of two critical variables for modelling fire behaviour and fire danger: the canopy base height (CBH) and the canopy bulk density (CBD). Both variables have been mapped as raster datasets at a 100-meter spatial resolution across Europe, harmonizing data for all EU countries. Therefore, these canopy fuels are subsequently used for further processing regarding the identification of fire danger assessment, being a key input for forest fire prevention actions. A more in-depth analysis of these findings has been submitted to a journal and is currently in a revision phase. We present here a summary of the results and ideas for future developments. The overall study consists of estimating CBH and CBD using Earth observation products combined with artificial intelligence and species-specific allometric equations, applied geo-spatially using a tree species map of Europe encompassing the 16 most important tree species. Validation was carried out by comparing the results with higher-accuracy sampling methods, combining LiDAR data and field measurements in different European latitudes, typically applied on a smaller scale and with greater detail. Results show, as expected, a higher level of uncertainty than local methods, but they are still applicable to the European scale for which they were implemented. The accuracies reported in our study, when considering aggregated data on the 7 areas in Portugal were the following: R = 0.75, RMSE = 0.890 m, and MAPE = 54% for the mean CBH, and R = 0.93, RMSE = 0.020 kg m-3, and MAPE = 57% for the mean CBD.
Jordina Gili, Mar Viana, Philip K. Hopke. Science of the Total Environment. July 2024.
Galicia (NW Spain) is one of the most fire-prone regions in Southern Europe. In the summer of 2022, a total of thirteen wildfires each exceeding 500 ha were reported in this area, with ten of these large fires occurring in the Ourense region. To study the impacts of wildfire smoke plumes on ambient air PM2.5 concentrations, a network of 18 PurpleAir monitors was deployed across the Galicia region during July and August 2022. The PM2.5 concentration data were then used as input to test the applicability of quasi-empirical orthogonal functions (QEOFs obtained with Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF)) to characterize the spatial variability of wildfire smoke impacts on air quality. HYSPLIT back-trajectory analysis and Concentration-Weighted Trajectory (CWT) models were implemented, and the results from these tools were combined with source contributions. As a result, 19 wildfires were identified and linked with peak ambient PM2.5 concentrations (>300 μg/m3 of PM2.5; 1-h mean). Specifically, the Folgoso do Courel fire emerged as a significant contributor to these high concentrations and played an important role in influencing a significant number of the identified factors. Moreover, the results also suggested that emissions from fires in Portugal reached the study area, contributing additional impacts on air quality. These results demonstrated that this approach was useful in identifying the emission source areas contributing to observed PM2.5 concentrations during wildfire events. The PM2.5 concentration maps resulting from the CWT analysis were also valuable in understanding the short- and long-term exposures to PM2.5 from wildfire smoke.
Emin Zeki Başkent, José Guilherme Borges, Jan Kašpar. Forest Management. June 2024.
The spatial forest planning concept has evolved as an essential component of the forest management planning process. The development of both exact and heuristic modeling techniques as analytical solution techniques have seen significant progress in application to spatial forest planning over the last two decades. This paper aims at providing a comprehensive review of the current state of spatial forest planning in both scope and depth, focusing on different approaches and techniques used, the challenges faced, and the potential future developments. For that purpose, we conduct a world-wide literature review and an extensive analysis of the status and trends over the past two decades in spatial forest planning.
Miguel F. Constantino, Marta Mesquita, Susete Marques, Sándor F. Tóth, José G. Borges. International Transactions in Operational Research. May 2024.
We present two mixed integer linear programming (MILP) formulations for a well-known integrated network, timber landing location, and routing problem that arises in forest management. The models seek to jointly optimize the construction and maintenance schedule of forest road networks with landing site selection and transportation routing for timber production. This problem is, in general, difficult to solve as it contains the so-called fixed charge network flow problem, which is known to be NP-hard. One of the proposed MILP formulations considers 3-index continuous variables to represent timber flows on road segments in each period. The presence of Big-M constraints leads to weak linear relaxation bounds. Disaggregating flow variables, according to timber origin, results in a novel 4-index formulation with very tight linear relaxation bounds. Nevertheless, the number of variables increases prohibitively. This research makes use of spatial constraints common to Smallholding Forested Landscapes to develop a solution approach that reduces the number of flow variables in the new 4-index model. Results from a real-world case study located in Northwest Portugal show that, with the 4-index formulation, the proposed solution approach makes it possible to obtain optimal solutions in a short computational time.
Camille Luciani, Virginie Tihay-Felicelli, Bruno Martinent. Paul Antoine Santoni, Frédéric Morandini, Toussaint Barboni. Fire Safety Journal. April 2024.
The aim of this study was to investigate experimentally the influence of fuel moisture content on the fire behaviour of Cistus monspeliensis, when exposed to a fire front spreading across a fuel bed. Shrubs of Cistus monspeliensis with leaf moisture contents ranging between 10 and 100 % were placed under a Large Scale Heat Release Calorimeter and a bed of wood wool was used before and under the branches to mimic an ignition from an underneath burning herbaceous layer. Mass loss, heat release rate (HRR) and total heat release (THR) were measured. The peak of HRR, the THR and the effective heat of combustion decreased linearly with the leaf moisture content. Two thresholds, characteristics of the fire behaviour of Cistus monspeliensis, were obtained. The ignition threshold, equals to 85 %, is the maximum leaf moisture content at which the cistus will ignite. The spreading threshold, equals to 55 %, is the maximum leaf moisture content at which the flame front will spread through the branches.
Goran Krsnik, Eduard Busquets Olivé, Míriam Piqué Nicolau, Asier Larranaga, José Ángel Terés, Jordi Garcia-Gonzalo, José Ramón González Olabarria. Environmental Challenges. April 2024.
Large forest fires are one of the most common environmental issues in the Mediterranean region. In this study, we defined a set of indicators and criteria based on available spatial data to assess and prioritize management zones for preventing large forest fires in Catalonia (NE Spain). In total, 22 indicators were defined and grouped into 5 criteria. The process involved geospatial modelling using a Geographical Information System (GIS) and the Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) analysis. The conducted MAUT analysis resulted in the development of rules for a more standardized assessment of priority management areas. This assessment is based on participatory evaluation and introduces a utility-function-based hierarchical spatial model. Within the model, each of the 5 criteria contains relevant information, including fuel hazard, potential fire behaviour, fire extinction accessibility, valuable resources at risk, and historical fire data, serving as the foundation for a comprehensive analysis of fire prevention measures. During the assessment, two distinct sets of weights were applied: one based on expert evaluation and another using equal weights. These weights describe the relative importance of the indicators within each criterion in the assessment of fire prevention measures. Our results reveal noticeable differences between the two applied approaches. In general terms, management priority levels showcase certain spatial aggregation patterns and spatial polarization characteristics. Our study underscores the importance of participatory planning for prioritizing forest management areas to reduce fire impacts and presents a methodological framework that facilitates such spatial assessments, utilizing tools that combine expert knowledge and scientific expertise. Therefore, the main focus of this study is not on the obtained results, but on the novel methodological framework used, which consists in combining geospatial modelling with MAUT and the participatory workshops for generating the utility rules. This framework allows participation of stakeholders which at the same time enlarges credibility and acceptance of the methodology and results.
Dagm Abate, Susete Marques, Vladimir Bushenkov, Jose Riffo, Andres Weintraub, Miguel Constantino, Constantino LagoaC, Jose G. Borges. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. April 2024.
Forests provide multiple ecosystem services, some of which are competitive, while others are complementary. Pareto frontier approaches are often used to assess the trade-offs among these ecosystem services. However, when dealing with spatial optimization problems, one is faced with problems that are computationally complex. In this paper, we study the sources of this complexity and propose an approach to address adjacency conflicts while analyzing trade-offs among wood production, cork, carbon stock, erosion, fire resistance and biodiversity. This approach starts by sub-dividing a large landscape-level problem into four smaller sub-problems that do not share border stands. Then, it uses a Pareto frontier method to get a solution to each. A fifth sub-problem included all remaining stands. The solution of the latter by the Pareto frontier method is constrained by the solutions of the four sub-problems. This approach is applied to a large forested landscape in Northwestern Portugal. The results obtained show the effectiveness of using Pareto frontier approaches to analyze the trade-offs between ecosystem services in large spatial optimization problems. They highlight the existence of important trade-offs, notably between carbon stock and wood production, alongside erosion, biodiversity and wildfire resistance. These trade-offs were particularly clear at higher levels of these optimized services, while spatial constraints primarily affected the magnitude of the services rather than the underlying trade-off patterns. Moreover, in this paper, we study the impact of the size and complexity of the spatial optimization problem on the accuracy of the Pareto frontiers. Results suggest that the number of stands, and the number of adjacency conflicts do not affect accuracy. They show that accuracy decreases in the case of spatial optimization problems but it is within an acceptable range of discrepancy, thus showing that our approach can effectively support the analysis of trade-offs between ecosystem services.
Cathelijne R. Stoof, Edwin Kok, Adrián Cardil Forradellas, Margreet J. E. van Marle. Ambio. February 2024.
Landscape fires are usually not associated with temperate Europe, yet not all temperate countries record statistics indicating that actual risks remain unknown. Here we introduce new wildfire statistics for The Netherlands, and summarize significant events and fatalities. The period 2017–2022 saw 611 wildfires and 405 ha burned per year, which Copernicus’ European Forest Fire Information System satellite data vastly underestimate. Fires burned more heathland than forest, were small (mean fire size 1.5 ha), were caused by people, and often burned simultaneously, in Spring and in Summer drought. Suppression, restoration and traffic delays cost 3 M€ year. Dozens of significant events illustrate fire has never been away and has major societal impact amidst grave concerns for firefighter safety. Since 1833, 31 fatalities were reported. A legal framework is needed to ensure continuity of recordkeeping, as the core foundation of integrated fire management, to create a baseline for climate change, and to fulfill international reporting requirements.
Cathelijne R. Stoof, Jasper R. de Vries, Marc Castellnou Ribau, Mariña F. Fernández, David Flores, Julissa Galarza Villamar, Nicholas Kettridge, Desmond Lartey, Peter F. Moore, Fiona Newman Thacker, Susan J. Prichard, Pepijn Tersmette, Sam Tuijtel, Ivo Verhaar, Paulo M. Fernandes. Global Ecology and Biogeography. February 2024.
Background: As fire regimes are changing and wildfire disasters are becoming more frequent, the term megafire is increasingly used to describe impactful wildfires, under multiple meanings, both in academia and popular media. This has resulted in a highly ambiguous concept.
Approach: We analysed the use of the term ‘megafire’ in popular media to determine its origin, its developments over time, and its meaning in the public sphere. We subsequently discuss how relative the term ‘mega’ is, and put this in the context of an analysis of Portuguese and global data on fire size distribution.
Results: We found that ‘megafire’ originated in the popular news media over 20 years before it appeared in science. Megafire is used in a diversity of languages, considers landscape fires as well as urban fires, and has a variety of meanings in addition to size. What constitutes ‘mega’ is relative and highly context-dependent in space and time, given variation in landscape, climate, and anthropogenic controls, and as revealed in examples from the Netherlands, Portugal and the Global Fire Atlas. Moreover, fire size does not equate to fire impact.
Conclusion: Given the diverse meanings of megafire in the popular media, we argue that redefining megafire in science potentially leads to greater disparity between science and practice. Megafire is widely used as an emotive term that is best left for popular media. For those wanting to use it in science, what constitutes a megafire should be defined by the context in which it is used, not by a metric of one-size-fits-all.
Marcos Rodrigues, Víctor Resco de Dios, Angelo Sil, Angel Cunill Camprubí, Paulo M. Fernandes. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. January 2024.
Dead fine fuel moisture content (FM) is one of the most important determinants of fire behavior. Fire scientists have attempted to effectively estimate FM for nearly a century, but we are still lacking broad scale evaluations of the different approaches for prediction. Here we tackle this problem by taking advantage or a recently compiled global fire behavior database (BONFIRE) gathering 1603 records of 1h (i.e., <6 mm diameter or thickness) dead fuel moisture content from measurements before experimental fires. We compared the results of models routinely used by different agencies worldwide, empirical models, semi-mechanistic models and also non-linear and machine learning approaches based on either temperature and relative humidity or vapor pressure deficit (VPD). A semi-mechanistic model based on VPD showed the best performance across all FM ranges and a historical model developed in Australia (MK5) was additionally recommended for low fuel moisture estimations. We also observed significant differences in FM dynamics between vegetation types with FM in grasslands more responsive to changes in atmospheric dryness than woody ecosystems. The addition of computational complexity through machine learning is not recommended since the gain in model fit is small relative to the increase in complexity. Future research efforts should concentrate on predictions at low FM (<10 %) as this is the range most significant for fire behavior and where the poorest model performance was observed. Model predictions are available from https://hcfm.shinyapps.io/shinyfmd/.
Flavio Tiago Couto, Jean-Baptiste Filippi, Roberta Baggio, Catia Campos, Rui Salgado. Atmospheric Research. January 2024.
Understanding the development of fire-generated thunderstorms in mega fire events is important given their high impact on the evolution of the fire fronts, where the fire spread becomes highly unpredictable and difficult to suppress. This study aims to investigate numerically the influence of strong pyro-convective activity on the local atmospheric conditions by means of a numerical simulation based on the coupled Meso-NH/ForeFire code. To our knowledge, it is the first time that the effect of wildfire spread on the local atmospheric conditions is accounted explicitly in a high-resolution NWP model to investigate pyro-convection activity. More specifically, we study numerically the Portuguese Pedrógão Grande mega fire, which was one of the most destructive and deadliest wildfire hazards affecting the Mediterranean region in the recent years. The spatio-temporal propagation of the wildfire was assigned a priori on the basis of the official investigation’s reports, while the impact of the forced fire evolution and of the ensuing heat and water vapour emissions on the local atmospheric conditions is accounted explicitly. The simulation, configured with very-high spatial and temporal resolutions, was capable of resolving the intense convective column reaching the upper troposphere and the fast development of the associated cloud system. The numerical fire produced intense updraughts with vertical velocities above 15 m/s, whereas the associated pyroCb cloud was composed by five different hydrometeor species along the main convective column and reached an altitude of 10 km. It is remarkable that the numerical experiment reproduced phenomena occurring at a fine scale related to cloud microphysics, such as very-localized outflows. This study, based on a coupled numerical simulation, was capable of illustrating in detail the development of a pyroCb cloud from strong pyro-convective activity.
2023
Francesco Pirotti, José R González-Olabarria, Erico Kutchartt. The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. December 2023.
In this work, an ensemble of machine learning algorithms was trained using stratified sampling from an existing European-scale biomass map from 2018 to predict an updated version for 2020. The objective of stratification is to make sure that the full range of biomass values is represented. The sampled biomass values from 2018 were filtered to remove areas that did were subject to forest disturbances between 2018 and 2020. This information was available from forest cover/loss/gain maps derived from satellite imagery. We train using a total of 49 features derived from the following sources: bioclimatic data, maps of land-cover, tree cover, tree height, annual composites of vegetation indices per pixel (EVI and NDVI) obtained from Sentinel-2, radar backscatter median annual values from Sentinel-1 and ALOS-2, and the ALOS DSM (3D) elevation grid. A model was created dividing Europe into 19 tiles to limit variability due to very different bioclimatic zones. The result is a raster with 100 m × 100 m resolution and an estimated value of biomass (Mg ha−1) at each node. Overall results on validation data over Europe report a root mean square error (RMSE) of 32.4 Mg ha−1 and a mean absolute error (MAE) of 21.5 Mg ha−1; when considering single tiles, the largest RMSE was 54.7 Mg ha−1 in tile D2, which can be explained by the very high variance of climate, environment, terrain topography and biomass values as the tile enclosed the Alpine region and the western part of Eastern Europe.
Erico Kutchartt, José R González-Olabarria, Antoni Trasobares, Sergio de-Miguel, Adrian Cardil, Brigite Botequim, Vassil Vassilev, Palaiologos Palaiologou, Martino Rogai, Francesco Pirotti. iForest Biogeosciences and Forestry. October 2023.
We present a browser-based App for smartphones that is freely available to end-users for collecting geotagged and oriented photos depicting vegetation biomass and fuel characteristics. Our solution builds on advantages of smartphones, allowing their use as easy sensors to collect data by imaging forest ecosystems. The strength and innovation of the proposed solution is based on the following points: (i) using a low memory footprint App, streaming images and data with as little data-volume and memory as needed; (ii) using JavaScript APIs that can be launched from both a browser or as an installed App, as it applies features such as service workers and Progressive Web App; (iii) storing both image and survey data (geolocation and sensor orientation) internally to the device on an indexed database, and synchronizing the data to a cloud-based server when the smartphone is online and when all other safety tests have been successfully passed. The goal is to achieve properly positioned and oriented photos that can be used as training and testing data for future estimation of the surface fuel types based on automatic segmentation and classification via Machine Learning and Deep Learning.
Alejandro Miranda, Alexandra D. Syphard, Miguel Berdugo, Jaime Carrasco, Susana Gómez-González, Juan F. Ovalle, Cristian A. Delpiano, Solange Vargas, Francisco A. Squeo, Marcelo D. Miranda, Cynnamon Dobbs, Rayen Mentler, Antonio Lara & René Garreaud. Nature. October 2023.
Large-scale, abrupt ecosystem change in direct response to climate extremes is a critical but poorly documented phenomenon1. Yet, recent increases in climate-induced tree mortality raise concern that some forest ecosystems are on the brink of collapse across wide environmental gradients2,3. Here we assessed climatic and productivity trends across the world’s five Mediterranean forest ecosystems from 2000 to 2021 and detected a large-scale, abrupt forest browning and productivity decline in Chile (>90% of the forest in <100 days), responding to a sustained, acute drought. The extreme dry and warm conditions in Chile, unprecedented in the recent history of all Mediterranean-type ecosystems, are akin to those projected to arise in the second half of the century4. Long-term recovery of this forest is uncertain given an ongoing decline in regional water balance. This dramatic plummet of forest productivity may be a spyglass to the future for other Mediterranean ecosystems.
Martino Rogai, Michele Salis, Andrea Berton,, Lorenzo Arcidiaco, Carla Nati, Gianni Picchi. 55th International Symposium on Forestry Mechanization. September 2023.
Wildfires increasingly threaten the Mediterranean, requiring precise biomass fuel load estimates for prevention and firefighting. Traditionally, biomass is estimated via satellite data or field measurements. Satellites cover large areas but lack ground detail, while fieldwork is detailed but time-consuming, spatially limited, and operator-dependent. LiDAR technology offers rapid, objective digital surveys using UAVs and Mobile Laser Scanners (MLS), allowing detailed, spatially accurate measurements of above and below-crown biomass. However, it demands costly equipment, skilled operators, extensive data processing, and ground truthing due to Mediterranean vegetation complexity. This study compares LiDAR data with field measurements in Sardinia, Italy. UAVs surveyed entire plots, while MLS was limited to accessible areas in dense vegetation. Field control data included diameter at breast height (DBH), total height (HT), and crown base height (CBH). LiDAR and destructive sampling estimated crown bulk density (CBD) and canopy cover (CC). Data assessed fuel loads pre- and post-biomass removal, with FLAMMAP simulations evaluating wildfire risk reduction.
Mafalda Alexandra Faria Ferreira. Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto. August 2023.
Recent advancements in biometric methods focus on physiological traits, with wearable devices enabling non-invasive, comfortable acquisition of these signals. Such devices are crucial for monitoring health and enhancing security in automated settings. This thesis examines wearable devices for physiological signal acquisition in human recognition, especially in high-risk jobs like firefighting. Traditional methods like fingerprinting are impractical due to protective gear, making continuous monitoring of signals like ECG a viable alternative. The study explores whether combining ECG with respiratory signals improves identification accuracy. A dataset of 24 individuals, approved by INESC TEC’s ethics committee, was collected using the VitalSticker device. Machine learning models were applied to datasets of 24, 10, and 5 individuals using ECG and respiratory signals. Results show that ECG alone achieves 86% accuracy with 10-person datasets, while combining respiratory signals increases accuracy to 91%. Support Vector Machines excelled with ECG-only data, and Random Forest performed best with combined signals. The findings demonstrate wearable devices’ potential in safety-critical environments, emphasizing their role in improving biometric identification and addressing challenges in physiological signal utilization.
Soazig Darnay, Elena Gorriz. Revue des Œnologues. July 2023.
Le climat méditerranéen est connu pour des régimes pluviaux concentrés au printemps et à l’automne, et des étés secs et chauds. Cette logique climatique a créé un paysage de garrigues et de forêts sèches en été, propice au développement d’incendies. Le changement climatique : l’accroissement des périodes de sécheresse, la répétition des canicules, accentue le stress hydrique des plantes, voire la mortalité de certaines espèces – ce qui augmente ce que les pompiers appellent « e combustible disponible » et par conséquent le risque incendie. Or, le modèle agricole méditerranéen des aires non irrigables est rarement assez productif pour être rentable. La topographie souvent accidentée n’aide pas non plus à la mécanisation des cultures. On constate donc un abandon des terres dans de nombreux arrière-pays du bassin méditerranéen, que le contexte socioéconomique agricole (manque de renouvellement générationnel, concentration des terres) et les difficultés climatiques croissantes favorisent. En conséquence, ce sont des massifs forestiers qui s’étendent et se rejoignent. Globalement, ce sont des forêts jeunes avec une majorité de pins d’Alep dont la germination des graines est favorisée par le feu et dont les aiguilles sont très inflammables. Dans certains territoires, les incendies à répétition ne permettent pas à d’autres espèces de s’implanter durablement
Cátia Campos, Flavio Tiago Couto, Jean-Baptiste Filippi, Roberta Baggio, Rui Salgado. Atmospheric Research. July 2023.
This study enhances our understanding of pyro-convection using a coupled fire-atmosphere simulation. It focuses on the large-scale meteorological conditions in Portugal during the multiple mega-fire events on October 15, 2017. Two simulations were conducted using the MesoNH model. The first, a large single-domain simulation, examined general conditions. The second, coupled with the ForeFire model, delved into the Quiaios fire in detail, using nested domains for high resolution. The simulations highlighted the impact of south/southwest winds from Hurricane Ophelia on fire spread and revealed pyro-convective activity influenced by subtropical moisture transport. The coupled simulation successfully replicated the formation of a PyroCu cloud within the smoke plume, showcasing convective updrafts’ role in transporting water vapor to higher levels and creating a high-based cloud over a dry atmospheric layer.
Liliana Ferreira, Alexandra Nascimento Baptista, Miguel Constantino, Susete Marques, Isabel Martins and Jose G. Borges. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. July 2023.
This research aims at presenting landscape management planning methods to help stakeholders select forest ecosystem management plans that may address concerns with wildfire risk and with the environmental impacts of clearcuts. Specifically, we develop mixed integer programming models for spatial optimization that incorporate a wildfire resistance index as well as constraints on the size of clearcut openings. The former is used to enforce a minimum level of resistance to wildfire while the latter limits the size of openings, in each period of the planning horizon. Timber volume even flow is another concern that is also taken into account. This research is applied to the Zonas de Intervenção Florestal (ZIF) de Paiva and de Entre-Douro e Sousa (ZIF_VS) which are located in northwestern Portugal.
Judit Lecina-Diaz, María-Luisa Chas-Amil, Núria Aquilué, Ângelo Sil, Lluís Brotons, Adrián Regos, Julia Touza. Journal of Environmental Management. July 2023.
In Southern Europe, increasing wildfire risk due to land abandonment and a focus on fire suppression prompts a need for policy change. Using scenario analysis, landscape modeling, and economic tools, we assessed land-use policies in the Gerês-Xurés Biosphere Reserve. Four scenarios were considered: Business as Usual (BAU), fire-smart, High Nature Value farmlands (HNVf), and a combination of HNVf and fire-smart. The HNVf + fire-smart scenario emerged as the most efficient, reducing wildfire hazard through recultivation and promoting fire-resistant tree species. This approach, rewarding farmers for wildfire prevention, can enhance local support for Payments of Ecosystem Services policies.
Francisco Manuel Pinto Vieira; Mafalda Alexandra Ferreira; Duarte Dias; João Paulo Silva Cunha. 2023 IEEE 7th Portuguese Meeting on Bioengineering (ENBENG). June 2023.
Wearable Health Devices (WHDs) are increasingly becoming an integral part of daily life and significantly contributing to self-monitoring in healthcare. WHDs have a wide range of applications, ranging from sports to clinical settings, where the monitoring of cardiovascular health, particularly through ECG, plays a crucial role. This study introduces a unique WHD called VitalSticker, which exhibits distinctive features such as having a comfortable tiny patch form-factor to be attached to the chest, collecting multiple vital signs with medical-grade quality (ECG, respiration, temperature and actigraphy) and seamlessly sending data to a companion app. This paper encompasses a detailed description of the hardware, firmware, and case design of the WHD. A study was conducted to assess the quality of the ECG signal acquired by VitalSticker, comparing it with the signal obtained from a CE medical-grade certified ambulatory device. The results demonstrate that our VitalSticker achieves similar medical-grade quality when compared to the reference device, surpassing its counterpart in several specifications. Furthermore, this study presents the successful implementation of an ECG baseline wander correction filter that runs on the tiny on-board wearable microcontroller without introducing any artifacts into the ECG signal, reducing the need for further processing for this outside the wearable patch.
Jaime Carrasco, Rodrigo Mahaluf, Fulgencio Lisón, Cristobal Pais, Alejandro Miranda, Felipe de la Barra, David Palacios, Andrés Weintraub. Journal of Environmental Management. May 2023.
This study proposes the use of a specific approach to optimize the selection of firebreak locations for better wildfire protection.
The approach considers ecological values, historical fire patterns, and fire behavior. By using a computer model, the optimal placement of firebreaks is determined by balancing the tradeoff between potential biodiversity loss from vegetation removal and the protection provided by the firebreaks. The model’s optimal solution reduces expected biodiversity losses from wildfires by 30% compared to doing nothing and performs 16% better than randomly chosen firebreak locations. This highlights the potential of firebreaks to mitigate biodiversity loss by effectively protecting against future forest fires.
Anna Karali, Konstantinos V. Varotsos, Christos Giannakopoulos, Panagiotis P. Nastos, and Maria Hatzaki. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences. February 2023.
This study focuses on predicting seasonal fire danger in the fire-prone Attica region of Greece using high-resolution forecasts. By analyzing weather conditions and utilizing the Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) and Initial Spread Index (ISI), the study found that these indices are reliable in forecasting above-normal fire danger conditions. The forecasts were compared with historical fire data, showing the ability to identify years with high fire occurrences. This information can assist regional authorities in implementing effective fire prevention strategies and allocating resources accordingly.
Barend L. van Drooge, Raimon M. Prats, Clara Jaén & Joan O. Grimalt. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment. February 2023.
A highly sensitive method using GC-Orbitrap-MS was developed for analyzing PAHs at sub-picogram levels in outdoor air PM2.5 and SRM2260a. The approach demonstrated low instrumental uncertainties (1–22%) and high linearity (0.5 pg to 500 pg/μL). Compared to conventional GC–MS, it showed good reproducibility in PM samples, with a quantification limit of 0.5 pg/μL. This method successfully analyzed PAHs in low-volume samples, such as filter strips from eBC analyzers and personal exposure monitors of firefighters. Strong correlations (r2 ≥ 0.93) between PAHs and eBC revealed distinct emission sources like traffic or wood burning. The method enables high precision analysis of PAHs in atmospheric PM samples, facilitating frequent sampling for personal exposure monitoring assessments.
Margarita Bachantourian, Kostas Kalabokidis, Palaiologos Palaiologou, Kyriakos Chaleplis. February 2023
A crucial risk governance priority of the Greek forest managers is to reduce damages in the wildland–urban interface (WUI) by controlling wildfire behavior through fuel management practices. To support decisions for where management should be applied and how, this study experimented with new methods for fuel treatments allocation over a typical Mediterranean fire-prone landscape in the peninsula of Kassandra (an area of 350 km2), northern Greece. The Minimum Travel Time (MTT) fire simulation algorithm and the Treatment Optimization Model were used to produce eight spatial exclusionary and non-exclusionary datasets that were used as criteria for the spatial optimization of fuel management interventions. We used the Multicriteria Decisions Analysis method with Geographical Information Systems to cartographically intersect the criteria to produce two priority maps for two forest management scenarios (i.e., a control and a realistic one). The results revealed that 48 km2 of the study area was characterized as high-priority locations in the control scenario (i.e., with equally weighted management priorities), while 60 km2 was assigned to the high-priority class in the realistic scenario (i.e., with different weighted management priorities). Further analysis showed a substantial variation in treatment priority among the four major forest land cover types (broadleaves, sparse Mediterranean shrublands, conifers, and dense Mediterranean shrublands), revealing that the latter two had the highest selection values. Our methodological framework has already been operationally used by the Greek Forest Service branch of Kassandra to decide the most effective landscape fuel treatment allocation.
José Ramon Gonzalez-Olabarria, Jaime Carrasco, Cristobal Pais, Jordi Garcia-Gonzalo, David Palacios-Meneses, Rodrigo Mahaluf-Recasens, Olena Porkhum and Andres Weintraub. Fire. February 2023.
The paper focuses on the critical issue of fuel treatment allocation in Kassandra, located in northern Greece. The objective of the study is to safeguard the wildland-urban interface from the risk of large-scale wildfires. The outcomes of this research have been successfully implemented by the Greek Forest Service to reduce the area burned in the region by future wildfires, while simultaneously moderating fire intensity and spread rates.
Adrián Cardil, Marcos, Rodrigues, Mario Tapia, Renaud Barbero, Joaquin Ramírez, Cathelijne R. Stoof, Carlos Alberto Silva, Midhun Mohan, and Sergio de-Miguel. Nature Communications. January 2023.
Climate teleconnections (CT) remotely influence weather conditions in many regions on Earth, entailing changes in primary drivers of fire activity such as vegetation biomass accumulation and moisture. This publication summarises the CT-fire relationships into a set of six global CT domains that are discussed by continent, considering the underlying mechanisms relating weather patterns and vegetation types with burned areas across the different world’s biomes. Additionally, it highlights the regional CT-fire relationships worldwide, aiming to further support fire management and policy-making.
2022
Rodrigo Mahaluf Recasens, Jaime Carrasco, Fulgencio Lisón, Cristobal Pais, Alejandro Miranda, Felipe de la Barra, Andrés Weintraub. 2022 IEEE Latin American Conference on Computational Intelligence (LA-CCI). December 2022.
One way to mitigate the uncontrolled effect of fires and, at the same time, protect our communities and ecological values, is through forest fuel management. Theses activities constitute a means of fire prevention, involving planned changes to living or dead wildland fuels (prescribed burning, pruning, firebreaks, etc.) in order to lessen fire behaviour potential. In this study, we propose an integrated fire optimization and simulation approach to locate firebreaks on the landscape, so that the ecological damage resulting from the removal of vegetation in areas allocated to firebreaks is offset by the preservation of ecological values as a result of the treatment protective action. We use a prioritization metric —called Downstream Protection Value— that identifies crucial cells that have a significant influence on the spread of fires in the landscape and their potential for damaging ecological values. Our solution approach was tested on a real landscape located in Araucania Region, Chile, whose wildland fuels were classified according to the chilean KITRAL fire behavior system, and with real species observations taken from Global Biodiversity Information Facility occurrence dataset.
Pacheco, Renata Martins, Skulska, Irina, Sequeira, Ana Catarina, Colaço, Conceição. Livro de resumos. V Congresso Internacional Educação, Ambiente e Desenvolvimento (V CIEAD). November 2022.
In the context of climate change, projections indicate that wildfires will occur with more frequency and intensity. Thus, it is essential to educate the population to be prepared to deal with these events. This study reviews the state of the art of teaching materials on wildfires available ontine worlduide. A total of 66 references on the subject were found. The materials are from 13 countries, spread across five continents, and written in seven languages
Kindu, Mengistie, Logan Robert Bingham, José G. Borges, Susete Marques, Olha Nahorna, Jeannette Eggers, and Thomas Knoke. Land. November 2022.
Considering in situ carbon storage in forest management has gained momentum under increasing pressure to decarbonize our economies. Here, we present results from case studies in Portugal and Germany showing the opportunity costs of in situ carbon storage derived by multiple-objective optimization. We used a stand-level model to optimize land expectation value under uncertainty as a reference, then derived opportunity costs by including the enhancement of the average carbon storage in aboveground biomass as a second objective. Using the optimal (compromise) solution when considering both objectives simultaneously, we show opportunity costs of EUR 119 (Portugal) and EUR 68 (Germany) per Mg CO2eq. These opportunity costs are higher than conservative, but lower than alternative cost estimates for future damages caused by current CO2 emissions. An important result was that suggested reference solutions in both countries (though only for low discount rates in Portugal) were mixed forests without clearfelling. In Germany, this implicitly elevated carbon storage. Such “closer-to-nature-forest-management” systems were also mostly suggested by the optimization tool when carbon storage was an objective.
Palaiologos Palaiologou,. Kostas Kalabokidis. 9th International Conference on Civil Protection & New Technologies. October 2022.
Extreme wind events, climate warming and forest fuel build-up are combined to allow anthropogenic ignitions evolving into mega-fires and burn the wildland-urban interface. Recent catastrophic forest fires in Greece have prompted stakeholders to plan for fuel treatment programs, in an effort to
adopt the best compromise between fire control and fuel management approaches. We applied a framework that utilized stochastic wildfire simulations, geographic and trade-off analyses to evaluate different landscape fire management objectives and a more representative geography of risk in terms of setting goals and priorities. We used spatial analysis to investigate the existence of tradeoffs among alternative fuel management scenarios to meet socioecological, economic and wildfire suppression objectives. We examined how focusing on one management objective results in tradeoffs in others, and where spatial allocation achieves multiple forest and fire management objectives at the landscape level. The proposed scenario planning scheme helped to understand trade-offs and assess progress towards nationally identified priorities and targets in forest protection and fire risk management; and to discover the best investment projects at the appropriate scale. Related projects may include actions such as mitigation of surface and canopy forest fuels with thinning, mechanical treatments and pile or understory burning, reducing flammable vegetation surrounding homes, and optimizing preventive planning and disaster management based on local initiatives.
Palaiologos Palaiologou, Kostas Kalabokidis. 9th International Conference on Civil Protection & New Technologies. October 2022.
The Municipality of Dionysos is one of the most typical examples where all types and the entire continuum of the wildland urban interface (WUI) is present. As a result, thousands of homes are exposed to wildfire events, either incoming from neighboring municipalities, or ignited within Dionysos boundaries. In total, Dionysos has been affected by 28 fire incidents during the years 1984-2021 that totally burned 45,500 ha, of which, approximately 4,400 ha were burned within the limits of the Municipality; some more than once. From the above, questions arise as to how this extended WUI can be affected by potential future fires. The problem of wildfire spread within inhabited areas of Dionysos is complex and factors such as the type, continuity and density of vegetation, topography, buildings arrangement, existence of fuel management projects and local meteorological conditions play an important role in the exposure of each settlement. We attempted to answer these questions based on data concerning the propagation of historical fires, the current state of fuel and stochastic large wildfire simulations. We found that the fireshed area of Dionysos is 35,700 ha and wildfires can reach its boundaries from ignitions starting even 14 km away. The largest simulated fire started in the area of
Varnavas and burned 7,500 ha, crossing the entire eastern part of Dionysos. Finally, we found the ignition locations of 21 potential wildfires that can affect up to 20% of all structures in Dıonysos. Our results can inform where the future fuel management planning should focus to more effectively protect the assets and livelihood of Dionysos inhabitants.
Andrea Duane, Antoni Trasobares, Elena Górriz, Laia Casafont, and Sara Maltoni. Environmental Sciences Proceedings August 2022.
Extreme wildfire events exceeding control capacity are becoming a major environmental, economic and social threat, not only in fire-prone regions in Southern Europe, America and Oceania, but also in new areas such as Central and Northern Europe. The EU H2020 FIRE-RES project aims to provide Europe with the necessary capacity to avoid collapse in the face of Extreme Wildfire Events (EWE), which are projected to increase as the result of a harsher climate. FIRE-RES is a 4-year project (2021–2025) whose scope is to effectively promote the implementation of a holistic fire management approach and support the transition towards more resilient landscapes and communities to EWE in Europe. FIRE-RES brings together a transdisciplinary, multi-actor consortium of 35 partners, formed by researchers, wildfire agencies, technological companies, industry and civil society from 13 countries, linking to broader networks in science and disaster reduction management. The project will deploy a total of 34 innovation actions across a set of eleven living labs representing different environments in Europe and Chile. Its final mission is to boost the socio-ecological transition of the European Union towards a fire-resilient continent by developing a stream of innovative actions.
Karol Bot, Susete Marques, Jose G. Borges Book of Abstracts of the 19th Symposium on Systems Analysis in Forest Resources (SSAFR 2022). July 2022.
This work discusses the complex relationship between ecosystem services, wildfires, and forest management. Ecosystem services, vital for ecological, economic, and social sustainability, are influenced by their valuation over time and space, creating feedback loops that impact governance and resource management. Wildfires, a natural phenomenon in forest ecosystems, are linked to the landscape’s mosaic and its ecosystem services. Understanding these relationships is essential for developing strategies that balance ecosystem services’ provision with minimizing wildfire risks. The escalating frequency and severity of wildfires, exacerbated by climate change and overuse of ecosystem services, highlight the need for sustainable coexistence with fire. Unlike traditional approaches aiming to eliminate wildfires, emerging strategies integrate fire as a natural ecosystem process, advocating for risk management and land-use planning within coupled human-environment systems.
Andrea Duane, Jordi Garcia-Gonzalo, José González, José Borges, Antoni Trasobares. Book of Abstracts of the 19th Symposium on Systems Analysis in Forest Resources (SSAFR 2022). July 2022.
Extreme wildfire events exceeding control capacity are becoming a major environmental, economic and social threat not only in fire-prone regions in Southern Europe and America, Oceania, but also in new areas such as Central and Northern Europe. The EU H2020 FIRE-RES project aims to provide Europe
with the necessary capacity to avoid it collapsing in front of Extreme Wildfire Events (EWE), projected to increase as the result of a harsher climate. FIRE-RES is a 4-year project (2021-2025) whose scope is to effectively promote the implementation of a holistic fire management approach and support the
transition towards more resilient landscapes and communities to EWE in Europe. FIRE-RES brings together a transdisciplinary, multi-actor consortium of 35 partners, formed by researchers, wildfire agencies, technological companies, industry and civil society from 13 countries, linking to broader networks in science and disaster reduction management. The project will deploy a total of 34 innovation actions across a set of eleven living labs representing different environments in Europe and Chile. Its final mission is to boost the socio-ecological transition of the European Union towards a fire-resilient continent by developing a stream of innovative actions
José G. Borges, Susete M. Marques, Brigite Botequim. Book of Abstracts of the 19th Symposium on Systems Analysis in Forest Resources (SSAFR 2022). July 2022.
This presentation will report research results from the BIOECOSYS project. We provide information that may contribute a) to build and integrate resource capability models to estimate the impacts of stand-level management options on the provision of ecosystem services (e.g., wood, carbon, biodiversity, resilience to wildfires, protection against erosion, cultural services); b) to combine spatial optimization mixed integer programs with Pareto frontier approaches to provide information about the trade-offs between ecosystem services; and c) to integrate the spatial optimization Pareto frontier approach with a web based platform to implement a procurement auction approach and thus attract monetary commitments for increased supply of ecosystem services. We discuss results from the application of methods and tools developed to address a) to c) to the project case study area, the Sousa Valley, located in Northwest Portugal. It is currently dominated by eucalypt (Eucalyptus globulus Labill) pure stands and mixed stands of eucalypt and maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Ait). Associação Florestal de Vale do Sousa (AFVS) is responsible for the development of the ZIF joint management plan for over 300 forest owners. Stakeholders aim at promoting active forest management and at targeting the supply of a wide range of ecosystem services.(GEDI) Lidar forest structure measurements to map forest height, and the Copernicus Tree Cover Density. The CORINE Land Cover vector dataset of 2018 served as the base mapping and analysis layer, supplemented by information from the National Forest Registry of Greece (circa 1992) to define vegetation species in each CORINE class. Results showed important regional variations of fuel model types that explain the regional differences in burned area. Also, the distribution of topographic features by fuel model is indicative of why certain fuel types burn more frequently and intensively than others. We provided a breakdown of canopy cover and height by species that can aid to the understanding of which are the forests that require management to reduce their density (high canopy cover) or can create more revenue (high stand height).
Palaiologos Palaiologou, Kostas Kalabokidis, Christos Vasilakos. 2nd International Symposium on Sustainability and Geoinformatics in Vulnerable Ecosystems (2nd AGROECOINFO). July 2022.
The main drivers of wildfire behavior are topography (e.g., slope), weather (e.g., wind and fuel moisture content) and fuel (e.g., quantity, arrangement, and continuity at both the surface and canopy levels). In this study, we examined how the fuel characteristics (fuelbed inputs grouped as fuel model, canopy cover and stand height) vary by cover type and across the different regions of Greece for the reference year of 2018. In addition, we investigated how the different fuel models vary in terms of canopy characteristics and topographic features. The analysis was conducted by combining vector and raster datasets. Canopy characteristics datasets were retrieved from open geospatial providers such as the Global Land Analysis and Discover team at the University of Maryland, USA, which used the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation
(GEDI) Lidar forest structure measurements to map forest height, and the Copernicus Tree Cover Density. The CORINE Land Cover vector dataset of 2018 served as the base mapping and analysis layer, supplemented by information from the National Forest Registry of Greece (circa 1992) to define vegetation species in each CORINE class. Results showed important regional variations of fuel model types that explain the regional differences in burned area. Also, the distribution of topographic features by fuel model is indicative of why certain fuel types burn more frequently and intensively than others. We provided a breakdown of canopy cover and height by species that can aid to the understanding of which are the forests that require management to reduce their density (high canopy cover) or can create more revenue (high stand height).
José Borges, Jordi Garcia Gonzalo José Ramon Gonzalez-Olabarria, Susete Marques, Virginie Tihay-Felicelli, Jordi Corbera, Andrea Duane, Antoni Trasobares. IUFRO Division 4.04.07 Risk analysis. June 2022.
Andrea Duane, Elena Górriz, Miriam Pique, Eduard Plana Bach, José Ramon Gonzalez Olabarria, Laia Casafont, Antoni Trasobares. 8º Congreso Forestal Españo. June 2022.
El Pacto Verde Europeo aspira a convertir la Unión Europea en un territorio neutro de emisiones para 2050, así como proteger el capital natural de Europa para las personas y la salud. En este contexto, surge la necesidad de prevenir y prepararse para afrontar eventos de incendios extremos que están por venir en el territorio europeo. El proyecto FIRE-RES, financiado bajo la convocatoria del Green Deal LC-GD-1-1-2020 durante el periodo 2021-2025, tiene como objetivo general proveer a la Unión Europea de las herramientas necesarias para no colapsar frente a los incendios forestales extremos previstos ante un clima más adverso. El proyecto desplegará un conjunto de acciones innovadoras en los ámbitos de la gestión del paisaje, la bioeconomía, la tecnología y la gobernanza proactiva, que facilitarán la implantación de un cambio de paradigma en la gestión integrada del fuego. En España, se dinamizarán tres living labs con particularidades propias en la gestión del fuego: Cataluña (gradiente mediterráneo-pirenaico con alta densidad de población), Galicia (compleja matriz forestal-rural-urbana en clima atlántico) e Islas Canarias (territorio remotos y con gran activo turístico). En este trabajo presentamos los principales retos que afrontamos en el proyecto, así como las acciones previstas para las regiones españolas.
Irina Skulska, Ana Catarina Sequeira,, Conceição Colaço. Congresso Anual de Comunicação de Ciência – SciComPt. May 2022.
Os incêndios florestais extremos constituem uma ameaça ambiental, económica e social em todo o mundo. A Comissão Europeia tem investido elevados recursos na investigação e desenvolvimento de novos modelos e abordagens para lidar com este problema. O projeto FIRE-RES (tecnologias inovadoras e soluções socio-ecológicas e económicas para territórios resilientes aos incêndios na Europa), conta com um consórcio de 34 parceiros de 13 países, e visa impulsionar a transição socioecológica da UE para uma Europa mais resiliente aos incêndios, com base em ações de inovação. Um dos principais objetivos do FIRE-RES é partilhar e transferir o conhecimento gerado ao longo do projeto, através de ações de sensibilização e de promoção envolvendo a sociedade.
Míriam Piqué, José Ramón González-Olabarria and Eduard Busquets. Forests. May 2022.
This publication investigates the effectiveness of precommercial thinning, over time, implemented on Pinus halepensis (Aleppo pine) thickets, regarding fuel evolution and potential fire behavior. The study was implemented in 44 plots at different stages of fuel evolution. The results show that precommercial thinning has a positive impact on fire mitigation, but the impact that opening the tree canopy has on ground vegetation development must be considered in order to plan more efficient management strategies.
Elena Górriz Mifsud, Laia Casafont, Antoni Trasobares. El nuevo Horizonte para Europa: 11ª Conferencia del Programa Marco de Investigación e Innovación de la Unión Europea en España. April 2022.
The EU H2020 FIRE-RES project aims to provide Europe with the necessary capacity to avoid collapsing in front of Extreme Wildfire Events (EWE), projected to increase as the result of a harsher climate. An integrated management approach to the Fire Management Cycle phases (Prevention and Preparedness; Detection & Response; Restoration and Adaptation) is followed by developing Innovation Actions deployed and demonstrated in Living Labs across Europe and beyond. The Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia coordinates the FIRE-RES project. FIRE-RES brings together a transdisciplinary, multi-actor consortium formed by researchers, wildfire agencies, technological companies, industry and civil society, linking to broader networks in science and disaster reduction management.
Karol Bot and José G. Borges. Inventions. January 2022.
This paper aims to provide an overview of recent applications of machine learning methods for decision support in wildfire management. The focus is on providing a summary of these applications with classification according to case study type, machine learning method, case study location, and performance metrics. This publication highlights that the application of machine learning methods can help to improve support at different stages of fire management.
Lessons from the 2021 Fire Season: An Opportunity for Greece to Reform its Wildfire Risk Governance
Palaiologos Palaiologou, Kostas Kalabokidis. Advances in Forest Fire Research. 2022.
The 2021 fire season in Greece was catastrophic, with 140,000 hectares burned, including a massive fire on Evia Island (46,000 ha). These fires occurred under extreme drought but with low to moderate winds, predominantly affecting low-elevation conifer forests and shrublands. The simultaneous outbreak of several large-scale fires overwhelmed Greece’s firefighting capacity, as had occurred during the 2007 fire season. Fires were largely contained only when they reached natural barriers like the sea or previously burned areas.
Palaiologos Palaiologou, Kostas Kalabokidis. Advances in Forest Fire Research. 2022.
Greece has an ever-increasing appeal for establishment of new and/or expansion of existing human settlements that in turn cause pressures on the natural environment, increasing the fire risk and resilience at a landscape level. A multitude of Mediterranean-type of ecosystems exist in the country, ranging from low shrubs and coniferous woodlands on coastal sites to high-elevation conifer and broadleaf forests. Fire plays a critical role on how these ecosystems were formed and function. Due to the topography, land uses, numerous islands, extensive coastlines and local microclimates, we find either broad zones with similar fire-related characteristics or enclaves where unique interactions with landscape fires prevail. We described the fuel and fire schemes in Greece as formed by different combinations of topography, weather, vegetation and human activity. A geographical context for this analysis was provided by examples of recent wildfires occurred in Greece during the 21st century, which re-shaped the landscape and affected in multiple ways the natural environment and human settlements from severe fire effects. In addition, we showed how these wildfires created crises that drove fire management policies; and we illustrated how fuels and wildfires should be managed based on their respective fire regimes and expected fire effects. Finally, we briefly reviewed future implications for wildfire management from the cumulative effects of climate change, urban sprawl and unmanaged forest growth.