Authors: A. M. Ariza, F. Pirotti, M. T. M. de Oliveira and B. Botequim

Year: 2015

Abstract: The increase of forest threats in a global change context encourage fire prevention activities for the role in maintaining diversity and land sustainability as a multiuse system as well as for ensuring the welfare of the Mediterranean people. Silviculture prevention management is a complex, dynamic instrument implying many variables, needing knowledge about the strategic localization of fuel treatments. Optimization is driven by the need of accomplishing an objective (or multi-objective) with a limited number of resources, namely money, time, machinery or human resources. Where to treat? How much? Shape and size? The current framework was driven taking into account the Landscape Treatment Designer (LTD), a decision support tool to spatially explore optimal levels of fuel landscape treatment planning regarding: i) objectives as timber value and carbon storage; ii) treatment thresholds as fire hazard metrics (e.g. rate of spread, ROS and flame length, FL), iii) and constraints selected (annual budget restrictions to represent the total treatment allowance - area/ha). The research considered a property(extent ≈ 1500 ha) from the Grupo Portucel Soporcel (gPS), located in Serra do Socorro (Torres Vedras, Portugal), where eucalypt (E. globulus) is predominant. The central objective is to minimize the losses from wildfire to strategically allocating and scheduling fuel treatments into a spatial-temporal analysis without encroaching budget constraints, and further creates opportunities for the suppression, taking into account over time, wood supply for the pulp industry and meeting demands of carbon values. While the primary objective is to change stand conditions. The ultimate goal of the fuel treatments allocation is to increase landscape resistance to the severe effects of wildfire at different scales, following certain constraints. Explicitly: i) identifying understory fuel composition and stand conditions at temporal stage (t0, t1, t2, t3 corresponding to 2015, 2018, 2021 and 2024 respectively); ii) characterizing temporal fire behavior (t0,t1,t2,t3) using FlamMap 5 simulator for two weather scenarios (10% and 7% fuel moisture content for average and critical conditions, respectively), crossed with wind speed of 32 km/h; iii) examining optimal treatment locations for each temporal stage; iv) perform sensitivity analyzes(area treated - two treatment intensities of 70 ha and 100 ha), and v) improve spatial temporal fire resistance at landscape level. The effect of each scenario was changed by a set percentage of optimal parameters to address the identification of thresholds for radical change in fire behavior, and further insight to support hazard-reduction fuel practices. The accuracy of the results provided an overview of effective management strategies for fuel modifications on improving fire resiliency and selecting priority intervention areas in the gPS eucalyptus plantation.

URL: https://www.medfor.eu/sites/default/files/editor/martinariza2015_thesis_medforfinal.pdf

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