Forest fires: fire ecology

Endorsed by
DRMKC
Motivation

Understanding ecosystem's vulnerability and potential to adapt to such changes can help developing proactive and post-fire regeneration strategies.

 

Potential Solutions
Following solutions could be addressing this gap.

In fire driven areas, ecosystems possess structural and functional characteristics that were selected over time, and that allow them to cope with fires. Understanding how ecosystems respond to fire is important for managing them in a context where fires are prevalent. However, fire regimes are not stable nowadays in southern Europe, due to changes in land-use, human pressures and climate, among other drivers. Understanding how ecosystems will respond to changes in (e.g., increased fire frequency, severity, timing) and climate (e.g., increased temperature and decreased rainfall), or past land-use history and management is critical for assessing their vulnerability and capacity to provide their services.

In the short term, changes in fire drivers and regime can elicit variations in species composition, structure and functioning, which may further interact with fire drivers to further affect fire regimes. Understanding ecosystem's vulnerability and potential to adapt to such changes can help developing proactive and post-fire regeneration strategies.

 

Rationale & related CM function(s)

Study the regeneration niche of species in fire-prone areas. Focus on germination studies, encompassing the response of representative species from different provenances across their distribution range to variations in temperature and moisture in order to identify which species are more vulnerable to the impending climate change.
Study the combined effects of past fire and land-use management practices on species distribution patterns.
Identify critical thresholds below which ecosystem integrity cannot be sustained as a result of changes in fire frequency or other fire regime characteristics
Improve the knowledge on the potential for organisms to adapt, and the corresponding implications to the new climate and fire regimes
Research on events leading to tipping points in fire-prone ecosystems or newly fire-affected areas, as well as degradative loops
Need for developing and monitoring integrative studies addressing the interactions among various groups of organisms across different food chains to fully comprehend long-term impacts of fire regimes

Provenance
DRKMC gaps explorer: Forest Fires/Fire Ecology
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