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Fire management-oriented analysis of fire-fuel relations in mainland Portugal

Publication . Davim, David André Dias; Pereira, José Miguel Cardoso; Fernandes, Paulo Alexandre Martins; Rossa, Carlos Gonçalves

Fire (whether planned or unplanned) is an important ecological process that plays a critical role in landscape heterogeneity and resilience, and is the main driver of fire management programmes. While wildfires (unplanned fires) pose risks to life, property and natural resources, resulting in high socio-economic and environmental damages, prescribed burning (planned fires) is increasingly used as a tool to manage fuel hazards, but fire management in Southern Europe still lacks a convenient way to assess its effectiveness. The aim of this thesis was to investigate how fuels and fire-related processes occur, with a focus on fire-fire interactions, their outcomes and how they can be used to efficiently implement an integrated fire management approach in Portugal. This work includes a series of analyses of the interaction of wildfire with prescribed fire treatments and with previously burned areas in mainland Portugal, with a focus on the fire management objective of reducing the area burned by wildfire. The research was designed to assess the likelihood of wildfires encountering previously burned areas (both prescribed burns and wildfires) and to measure the effectiveness of previously burned areas in reducing the extent of wildfires. The results and discussion presented here contribute to the body of knowledge on fire-fuel relationships and may assist in the development of fire management policies in southern Europe and elsewhere.

2023-12-15Doctoral thesis

Open access