Addressing wildfire risk in forest management with a wildfire resistance indicator

Mestrado Mediterranean Forestry and Natural Resources Management - Instituto Superior de Agronomia - UL

As a Mediterranean country, in Portugal forest fires are considered an issue. In addition, the main tendency is that the number of fires and burned area will increase, as well as large and catastrophic fires. Thus, the increase of the social, ecological and economic damages. Through forest prevention it is possible to control the only controllable factor, vegetation. The objective was to find and test the most suitable available indicator to address wildfire risk in forest management. The selected indicator is based on biometric and location variables. Besides, it considers the spatial context since stand susceptibility to fire is influenced by the surroundings. The wildfire resistance indicator was tested in Chamusca and Vale do Sousa, considering forest treatments randomly selected for each stand for 2014, 2015 and 2020. This allowed to identify where the most susceptible areas are located, with lower wildfire resistance. The indicator can be integrated as another ecosystem service by a management planning approach to evaluate the trade-offs between a set of criteria that includes wildfire resistance. In sum, this study showed one possible way to address wildfire risk in forest management