‘Back to the Future’—Oak wood-pasture for wildfire prevention in the Mediterranean
Küçük Resim Yok
Tarih
2021
Dergi Başlığı
Dergi ISSN
Cilt Başlığı
Yayıncı
Societa Italiana di Scienza della Vegetazione
Erişim Hakkı
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Özet
In the summer of 2021, enormous wildfires in the Mediterranean eliminated huge areas of mainly coniferous forest, destroyed adjacent settlements and claimed the lives of many people. The fires indicate effects of climate change and expose consequences of rural demographic changes, deficits in regional and touristic development planning and shortcomings in forest policy. This forum article highlights the dimensions of the problem, calls for a paradigm shift and shows solutions. Land abandonment, woody plant encroachment and non-reflective afforestation are leading to increasing amounts of combustible biomass. To prevent disastrous fires in future, fundamental changes in tree species composition, forest structure and management are essential. Plantations of reseeding pines are to be substituted by spacious or periodically open woodlands of long-lived trees with resprouting capacity such as Mediterranean oaks. Biomass-reducing practices including wood-pasture have to be revived in rural and peri-urban areas. Exemplary fire-resistant multifunctional oak woodlands occur throughout the Mediterranean. Urgent and medium-term measures in the burnt areas include promoting natural ecosystem regeneration, developing regionalized seed banks and nurseries to support native genetic resources, fostering vegetation mosaics of groves and multiple-use open and coppice woodland maintained by traditional practices, and in general forest management aiming at fuel biomass reduction and a policy counteracting land abandonment. © 2021 Societa Italiana di Scienza della Vegetazione. All rights reserved.
Açıklama
Anahtar Kelimeler
Biomass reduction, Fire prevention, Forest fire, Forest management, Mediterranean Basin, Oak, Pine forest, Wood pasture
Kaynak
Plant Sociology
WoS Q Değeri
Scopus Q Değeri
Q1
Cilt
58
Sayı
2
