An advance of the role of human and natural factors in the genesis of forest fires in Cantabria (Northern Spain)

Carracedo, Virginia; Liaño, Concepción Diego; Codrón, Juan Carlos García; Álvarez, Domingo Fernando Rasilla

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2006.08.031

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Particularly, pasture burning is treated through a choice rule, due to the problems that this practice is causing. Presently, it is common for users to reduce the proliferation of shrubs by uncontrolled burning (Carracedo et al 2006). Concerning the action situation 'monitoring' there is an important difference between bylaws.…”

Section: Institutional Complexitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward an Integrated History to Govern the Commons: Using the Archive to Enhance Local Knowledge

Vázquez¹

2020

Int J Commons

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Communities that have used common-pool resources (CPRs) for generations often preserve a valuable 'institutional memory'. It can be understood as a subset of local knowledge concerning strategies, norms, and rules used by the community to deal with CPR problems (e.g. overexploitation) in different time periods. Scholars have argued that institutional memory is useful in two aspects of CPR governance: as focal point to encourage users to sustain and to undertake collective action, and as support knowledge to design new policies. However, institutional memory is constrained by personal and social memories, and therefore it must be considered not as fully cumulative but subject to a steady process of adjustment according to experience. When communities have recorded their regulations in writing, e.g. in village bylaws, it is possible to undertake a learning process to recover and take advantage of their institutional memory. One way is to carry out participatory workshops to compare the historical and presentday bylaws of the community. However, the comparison of these sources is not an easy task, because, on the one hand, they constitute a large body of rules and, on the other, they have been designed using different epistemologies (e.g. concrete vs. abstract) and linguistic forms (e.g. early modern vs. contemporary grammars). In this paper we use an approach based on the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework to compare the historical and presentday bylaws of a community located in Cantabria (Spain). The utility of the IAD framework is verified. It enables one not only to undertake a systematic comparison of the bylaws, but also to easily display the results in participatory workshops. The use of the archive as a source of local information to enhance users' knowledge is an uncommon procedure among CPR scholars and practitioners, and therefore we dedicate a specific section of the paper to discussing this utility.

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Section: Institutional Complexitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward an Integrated History to Govern the Commons: Using the Archive to Enhance Local Knowledge

Vázquez¹

2020

Int J Commons

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“…anuales significativas, vinculadas a episodios de gran actividad, como los años 1989, 2002 y 2008, que están relacionados con factores climáticos (CARRACEDO et al, 2006). En este sentido, los fuegos en el litoral cantábrico no se alejan de los resultados de estudios similares llevados a cabo en otras regiones del globo, que señalan cómo la velocidad de propagación de los fuegos, y por lo tanto, las superficies quemadas, dependen estrechamente de las condiciones ambientales (PYNE et al, 1996;WESTERLING et al, 2004;PEREI-RA et al, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

Clima e incendios forestales en Cantabria: evolución y tendencias recientes

et al. 2009

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Wildfires are a frequent event in Cantabria, but their seasonality does not match the typical warm season maximum generalized in most of the Iberian Peninsula. They occur at the end of the winter and the beginning of the spring (January to March), being mostly anthropogenically triggered, in conjunction with "Suradas", a windstorm which combines high winds and low humidity. In this contribution temporal trends of several climatic variables from meteorological observatories located in Cantabria and nearby regions are analyzed since 1961 during the highest risk period in order to assess to what extent the occurrence of wildfires may be linked to the recent climatic variability. Our results show that the regional climate has become warmer and drier, due to the combined effects of increases in temperatures and the decrease in relative humidity and precipitation, variables that are likely to play an important role in drought and fire proneness. However, the exception is the frequency of "Suradas", which have reduced. Those regional climatic trends are strongly linked to the recent evolution of atmospheric circulation at regional and hemispheric scale. The higher frequency of anticyclonic cells over the Iberian Peninsula, and conversely, the reduction of the number of Atlantic baroclinic disturbances are consistent with the temporal evolution of the North Atlantic Oscillation.

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Landscape – wildfire interactions in southern Europe: Implications for landscape management

Moreira¹,

Viedma²,

Arianoutsou³

et al. 2011

Journal of Environmental Management

743

567

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Every year approx. half a million hectares of land are burned by wildfires in southern Europe, causing large ecological and socio-economic impacts. Climate and land use changes in the last decades have increased fire risk and danger. In this paper we review the available scientific knowledge on the relationships between landscape and wildfires in the Mediterranean region, with a focus on its application for defining landscape management guidelines and policies that could be adopted in order to promote landscapes with lower fire hazard. The main findings are that (1) socio-economic drivers have favoured land cover changes contributing to increasing fire hazard in the last decades, (2) large wildfires are becoming more frequent, (3) increased fire frequency is promoting homogeneous landscapes covered by fire-prone shrublands; (4) landscape planning to reduce fuel loads may be successful only if fire weather conditions are not extreme. The challenges to address these problems and the policy and landscape management responses that should be adopted are discussed, along with the major knowledge gaps.

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An advance of the role of human and natural factors in the genesis of forest fires in Cantabria (Northern Spain)

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Toward an Integrated History to Govern the Commons: Using the Archive to Enhance Local Knowledge

Toward an Integrated History to Govern the Commons: Using the Archive to Enhance Local Knowledge

Clima e incendios forestales en Cantabria: evolución y tendencias recientes

Landscape – wildfire interactions in southern Europe: Implications for landscape management

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