Nature-based solutions to wildfires in rural landscapes of Southern Europe: let’s be fire-smart!

Abstract

Extreme wildfires are expected to increase in Southern Europe, due to climate change and rural abandonment. Fire management is focused on suppression, which accelerates the transition to more flammable landscapes. Here, we synthesise the knowledge acquired over the 'FirESmart' project (https://firesmartproject.wordpress.com). Our findings show how agroforestry policies could benefit biodiversity while providing further fire suppression opportunities. The EU Green Deal offers an opportunity to incorporate 'fire-smartness' into upcoming agroforestry policies. Still, if these policies fail at reversing rural abandonment, the use of fire could enhance rewilding and tree-planting as 'climate-smart' strategies in the fire-prone mountains of Southern Europe.

Analysis of Trends in the Distance of Wildfires from Built-Up Areas in Spain and California (USA): 2007–2015

“…Previous studies on fires have highlighted the significance of the location or physical space where the fire occurs. Researchers have analyzed various aspects, such as the frequency of fires in a particular area [41][42][43][44][45][46][47], the danger or risk of wildfires [48][49][50][51][52], and the size and area burned [53][54][55][56][57]. The process of how fire approaches buildings [29] has been a major concern for researchers.…”

Estimating the Trade-Offs between Wildfires and Carbon Stocks across Landscape Types to Inform Nature-Based Solutions in Mediterranean Regions

“…Climate and land-use changes have made Mediterranean-climate regions increasingly prone to extreme fire events and aridity, leading to carbon emissions and land degradation [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. On the one side, the terrestrial ecosystems are a global greenhouse gas (GHG) sink, but in contrast, agriculture and forestry are major sources of anthropogenic emissions, making land-use change the key driver of every terrestrial environmental syndrome including wildfires, desertification, and climate change [8].…”

“…In this sense, nature-based solutions (NbS), under the wider range of land-use measures, have been recommended to explore trade-offs and synergies across multiple ecosystem services [36]. Most studies using NbS for fire regulation and climate services, in Mediterranean regions, focus on land-use, land-cover (LULC) changes as major solutions [5,34,35,37,38]. According to those studies, trade-offs between these ecosystem services are expected since climate services are based on carbon storage increasing with forest and shrubland expansion, which may lead to increased fire risks [5,35,38,39].…”

“…Most studies using NbS for fire regulation and climate services, in Mediterranean regions, focus on land-use, land-cover (LULC) changes as major solutions [5,34,35,37,38]. According to those studies, trade-offs between these ecosystem services are expected since climate services are based on carbon storage increasing with forest and shrubland expansion, which may lead to increased fire risks [5,35,38,39]. However, because of geographic scope's limitations of such studies, fire regimes (FR) related to specific LULC are not sufficiently developed.…”

“…This framework involves a three-step approach: 1) it starts with an extensive characterisation of FR and CS, to find landscapes association with both ecosystem services; 2) secondly, following previous results, building a predictive model associating LULC with the most hazardous FR, coupled with a CS model; and finally, 3) using the models to simulate scenarios of LULC change to promote wildfire mitigation and carbon storage. The results are used to explore potential NbS to improve FR, also integrating CS to find trade-offs at landscape level [5,34,35,38].…”