Skip to main content

FRAMES logo
Resource Catalog

Document

Type: Journal Article
Author(s): Silvana Pais; Núria Aquilué; João C. Campos; Ângelo Sil; Bruno Marcos; Fernando Martínez-Freiría; Jesús Domínguez; Lluís Brotons; João P. Honrado; Adrián Regos
Publication Date: 2020

The environmental and socio-economic impacts of wildfires are foreseen to increase across southern Europe over the next decades regardless of increasing resources allocated for fire suppression. This study aims to identify fire-smart management strategies that promote wildfire hazard reduction, climate regulation ecosystem service and biodiversity conservation. Here we simulate fire-landscape dynamics, carbon sequestration and species distribution (116 vertebrates) in the Transboundary Biosphere Reserve Gerês-Xurés (NW Iberia). We envisage 11 scenarios resulting from different management strategies following four storylines: Business-as-usual (BAU), expansion of High Nature Value farmlands (HNVf), Fire-Smart forest management, and HNVf plus Fire-Smart. Fire-landscape simulations reveal an increase of up to 25% of annual burned area. HNVf areas may counterbalance this increasing fire impact, especially when combined with fire-smart strategies (reductions of up to 50% between 2031 and 2050). The Fire-Smart and BAU scenarios attain the highest estimates for total carbon sequestered. A decrease in habitat suitability (around 18%) since 1990 is predicted for species of conservation concern under the BAU scenario, while HNVf would support the best outcomes in terms of conservation. Our study highlights the benefits of integrating fire hazard control, ecosystem service supply and biodiversity conservation to inform better decision-making in mountain landscapes of Southern Europe.

Online Links
Citation: Pais, Silvana; Aquilué, Núria; Campos, João; Sil, Ângelo; Marcos, Bruno; Martínez-Freiría, Fernando; Domínguez, Jesús; Brotons, Lluís; Honrado, João P.; Regos, Adrián. 2020. Mountain farmland protection and fire-smart management jointly reduce fire hazard and enhance biodiversity and carbon sequestration. Ecosystem Services 44:101143.

Cataloging Information

Topics:
Regions:
Keywords:
  • Biomod2
  • fire suppression
  • fire-smart management
  • FireSmart
  • InVEST model
  • land abandonment
  • landscape management
  • Portugal
  • REMAINS model
  • Spain
  • wildfires
Record Last Modified:
Record Maintained By: FRAMES Staff (https://www.frames.gov/contact)
FRAMES Record Number: 61530