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Forests
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Engaging Land Owners to Reduce Wildfire Risk at Landscape Level
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Engaging Land Owners to Reduce Wildfire Risk at Landscape Level

A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Natural Hazards and Risk Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 August 2021) | Viewed by 16033

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. José M.C. Pereira

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Forest Research Centre, School of Agriculture, University of Lisbon, Tapada da Ajuda, 1349-017 Lisbon, Portugal
Interests: pyrogeography; remote sensing; landscape ecology of fire
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Large wildfires often affect areas belonging to multiple landowners, private and public, non-industrial and industrial. This poses specific and complex problems for landscape management aimed at fire prevention and rehabilitation of burned areas, which has to reconcile diverse, potentially conflicting values and interests. This Special Issue is motivated by our recent experience with a 2017 wildfire in Central Portugal that burned 17,500 hectares, including 6000 hectares in Alvares, a densely forested parish with some 3000 private landowners. A small group of these landowners undertook the initiative of promoting collective action for forest management, whereby a large contiguous area with multiple landowners is meant to be subject to a single management plan, developed in collaboration with the University of Lisbon. The plan aims at rehabilitating the burned area with a landscape design to reduce its vulnerability to large wildfires. Key objectives are to protect local communities, while keeping plantation forestry as the main economic activity.

This Special Issue will include a series of papers describing various aspects of that collaboration. We welcome other researchers working in similar research projects to share their experiences by submitting contributions to this Special Issue of Forests.

Prof. Dr. José M.C. Pereira
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Wildfire risk assessment
  • Plantation forestry
  • Landscape planning
  • Exposure and vulnerability
  • Land owner engagement
  • Collective action
  • Forest management

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 1370 KiB  
Article
Promoting Landscape-Level Forest Management in Fire-Prone Areas: Delegate Management to a Multi-Owner Collaborative, Rent the Land, or Just Sell It?
by Ana Martins, Ana Novais, José Lima Santos and Maria João Canadas
Forests 2022, 13(1), 22; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/f13010022 - 24 Dec 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2500
Abstract
Forest management at the landscape level is a requirement for reducing wildfire hazard. In contexts where non-industrial private forest ownership prevails, the collaboration among multiple owners has been proposed as the way forward to reach consistent fuel management at that level. The current [...] Read more.
Forest management at the landscape level is a requirement for reducing wildfire hazard. In contexts where non-industrial private forest ownership prevails, the collaboration among multiple owners has been proposed as the way forward to reach consistent fuel management at that level. The current literature has been focused on identifying the factors that lead to collaboration among owners. In this study we explored other ways to reach landscape-level management in addition to the collaborative way, such as those that may be promoted through land renting or selling. Different contexts and owner types may require different solutions. Thus, we explicitly asked which alternative would be chosen by a given forest owner, from the following set: keeping individual management, entering a multi-owner collaborative arrangement where they delegate management, renting to a pulp company; or selling the land. In a context of small-scale ownership and high recurrence of wildfires in Portugal, a face-to-face survey was carried out to a sample of landowners. Our results suggest that there is not an a priori generalized unwillingness of owners to delegate management, rent or sell the land and thus they seem prone to align themselves with policy strategies to promote management at the landscape level. Multinomial logit regression modelling allowed us to explain and predict owners’ choices among the aforementioned set of alternative management options. We found that choosing multi-ownership collaboration, as opposed to keeping current individual management, is associated with passive management under harsher conditions, by non-residents without bonding capital. The identified factors of owners’ choices show the limited scope of tenancy and land-market mechanisms to promote landscape-level management. The best policy option was found to depend on the owner profiles prevailing in the target area. This suggests that studying the existing context and owner types is required to design effective policies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Engaging Land Owners to Reduce Wildfire Risk at Landscape Level)
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33 pages, 4052 KiB  
Article
Combining Landscape Fire Simulations with Stand-Level Growth Simulations to Assist Landowners in Building Wildfire-Resilient Landscapes
by Susana Barreiro, Akli Benali, João C. P. Rua, Margarida Tomé, José L. Santos and José M. C. Pereira
Forests 2021, 12(11), 1498; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/f12111498 - 29 Oct 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2253
Abstract
The wildfire regime in Portugal has been responsible for millions of hectares of burnt area, and Alvares parish is no exception. In 2017, a severe wildfire burnt 60% of its area. Land abandonment has been increasing since the mid 20th century, and a [...] Read more.
The wildfire regime in Portugal has been responsible for millions of hectares of burnt area, and Alvares parish is no exception. In 2017, a severe wildfire burnt 60% of its area. Land abandonment has been increasing since the mid 20th century, and a large fraction of the forest area belongs to quasi-absent landowners. This has given rise to large, almost unbroken expanses of undermanaged forests that, in combination with rugged topography, originates a landscape prone to large, intense wildfires. Thus, a change in landscape composition and structure capable of reducing flammability and promoting fuel discontinuity is urgently needed. A fire spread simulator and a forest growth simulator were combined to show the impact of improving management at landscape level. It was assumed that the probability of large wildfires may be reduced by setting aside forest area for the implementation of a fuel break network (FBN) and increasing the area under sustainable forest management. Three levels of management intensity were simulated by restricting the area of Quasi-absent non-industrial owners to 34.5%, 20.1%, and 8.5% of the Alvares forest area, in favor of increasing the area of active and semi-active non-industrial owners (current, moderate, and high management scenarios). Different FBN extents, representing four levels of network implementation priority were combined with the management levels, resulting in 12 scenarios. To evaluate the impact of fire, simulations assuming no-fire, no-FBN, and current management intensity were performed, whereas the impact of operation costs was assessed assuming reduced costs for silvicultural operations. Per hectare simulations were then scaled up to the parish level and volume harvested and net present values were used to compare the management improvement scenarios. Results showed that fire has major repercussions on forest income, but these impacts can be minimized. Intensifying forest management and implementing the first priority FBN segments originated substantial improvements in financial outcome from timber production, close to those obtained for the full FBN implementation. Results also evidenced contrasting contributions from industrial and non-industrial owners with the later evidencing unbalanced cash-flows derailing the possibility for interesting forest incomes. The coupling of fire and forest growth simulations can be an interesting approach to assess the impact of different management and policy scenarios and inform policies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Engaging Land Owners to Reduce Wildfire Risk at Landscape Level)
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24 pages, 5470 KiB  
Article
Understanding the Impact of Different Landscape-Level Fuel Management Strategies on Wildfire Hazard in Central Portugal
by Akli Benali, Ana C. L. Sá, João Pinho, Paulo M. Fernandes and José M. C. Pereira
Forests 2021, 12(5), 522; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/f12050522 - 23 Apr 2021
Cited by 35 | Viewed by 4230
Abstract
The extreme 2017 fire season in Portugal led to widespread recognition of the need for a paradigm shift in forest and wildfire management. We focused our study on Alvares, a parish in central Portugal located in a fire-prone area, which had 60% of [...] Read more.
The extreme 2017 fire season in Portugal led to widespread recognition of the need for a paradigm shift in forest and wildfire management. We focused our study on Alvares, a parish in central Portugal located in a fire-prone area, which had 60% of its area burned in 2017. We evaluated how different fuel treatment strategies may reduce wildfire hazard in Alvares through (i) a fuel break network with different extents corresponding to different levels of priority and (ii) random fuel treatments resulting from a potential increase in stand-level management intensity. To assess this, we developed a stochastic wildfire simulation system (FUNC-SIM) that integrates uncertainties in fuel distribution over the landscape. If the landscape remains unchanged, Alvares will have large burn probabilities in the north, northeast and center-east areas of the parish that are very often associated with high fireline intensities. The different fuel treatment scenarios decreased burned area between 12.1–31.2%, resulting from 1–4.6% increases in the annual treatment area and reduced the likelihood of wildfires larger than 5000 ha by 10–40%. On average, simulated burned area decreased 0.22% per each ha treated, and cost-effectiveness decreased with increasing area treated. Overall, both fuel treatment strategies effectively reduced wildfire hazard and should be part of a larger, holistic and integrated plan to reduce the vulnerability of the Alvares parish to wildfires. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Engaging Land Owners to Reduce Wildfire Risk at Landscape Level)
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25 pages, 2462 KiB  
Article
A Choice-Modeling Approach to Inform Policies Aimed at Reducing Wildfire Hazard through the Promotion of Fuel Management by Forest Owners
by José L. Santos, Ana Martins, Ana Novais and Maria João Canadas
Forests 2021, 12(4), 403; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/f12040403 - 29 Mar 2021
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2696
Abstract
The public-good nature of benefits of fuel management explains its current undersupply and the consequent wildfire blow. Policies to promote fuel management are thus required. To be cost-effective, they need to be informed by context-specific estimates of forest owners’ willingness-to-accept (WTA) for managing [...] Read more.
The public-good nature of benefits of fuel management explains its current undersupply and the consequent wildfire blow. Policies to promote fuel management are thus required. To be cost-effective, they need to be informed by context-specific estimates of forest owners’ willingness-to-accept (WTA) for managing fuel. This study develops a choice-modeling approach to this problem. A survey of forest owners was undertaken in a wildfire-prone parish in Portugal. Respondents were asked about their willingness to subscribe different management contracts. A choice model was estimated and used to predict owners’ WTA for different fuel management commitments, and the marginal cost of reducing burned area in the parish. Estimated WTA amounts depend on owner type and commitment. Active owners demanded lower amounts for adopting silvicultural intervention commitments, and higher for those implying income foregone. The marginal cost of reducing burned area through fuel management increases with area, but it currently is yet smaller than the corresponding marginal benefit. Our results suggest that zero burned area is not an option and optimum fuel management lies beyond the current level. It will be shifted even beyond by targeted (key-spot) fuel management approaches; WTA differences across owners can be used to design context-specific policies that are more cost-effective. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Engaging Land Owners to Reduce Wildfire Risk at Landscape Level)
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22 pages, 4733 KiB  
Article
Assessing Risk and Prioritizing Safety Interventions in Human Settlements Affected by Large Wildfires
by Sandra Oliveira, Ana Gonçalves, Akli Benali, Ana Sá, José Luís Zêzere and José Miguel Pereira
Forests 2020, 11(8), 859; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/f11080859 - 06 Aug 2020
Cited by 25 | Viewed by 3431
Abstract
The large wildfires of June 2017 disturbed many communities in central Portugal. The civil parish of Alvares was severely affected, with about 60% of its area burnt. Assessing the risk of large wildfires affecting local communities is becoming increasingly important, to reduce potential [...] Read more.
The large wildfires of June 2017 disturbed many communities in central Portugal. The civil parish of Alvares was severely affected, with about 60% of its area burnt. Assessing the risk of large wildfires affecting local communities is becoming increasingly important, to reduce potential losses in the future. In this study, we assessed wildfire risk for the 36 villages of Alvares parish, by combining hazard, exposure and vulnerability analysis at the settlement scale. Hazard was obtained from fire spread simulations, which integrated exposure together with population and building density within each village. Vulnerability was based on the sociodemographic characteristics of the population, ranked with a hierarchical cluster analysis. Coping capacity was also integrated, considering the distance of each village to the fire station and the time needed for residents to reach a shelter. We simulated 12 different land management scenarios, regarding the implementation of a fuel-break network and the level of forest management activities. The potential effects of each scenario in the exposure and risk levels of the settlements were evaluated. The results show that, for a business-as-usual scenario, 36% of the villages are at high or very high risk of wildfires. Examining each risk component, 28% of the villages are highly exposed, 44% are highly vulnerable, and 22% do not have a potential shelter on-site, calling for different intervention strategies in each specific risk dimension. All the land management scenarios, even if designed for other purposes than the protection of settlements, could decrease the proportion of highly exposed villages at different levels, up to a maximum of 61%. These findings can contribute to adjust prevention and mitigation strategies to the risk levels and the characteristics of the population and the territory, and to prioritize the protection and emergency actions at the local scale. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Engaging Land Owners to Reduce Wildfire Risk at Landscape Level)
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