Spatial and temporal variations of overstory and understory fuels in Mediterranean landscapes
Mediterranean forests are prone to fire and highly diverse in environmental conditions, species composition, and forest structure. While much is known about fire hazard and forest responses to fire in Mediterranean climate regions, our understanding of the spatial distribution of fuel characteristics and their dynamics remains incomplete. We hypothesized that fire hazard in heterogeneous Mediterranean regions is primarily explained by the variation in fuel loading and flammability characteristics of the understory layer across the landscape and over time. We used the Spanish National Forest Inventory data to estimate overstory and understory fuel characteristics, compare their spatial and temporal variations across Catalonia (NE Spain) over the last 25 years, and assess the role of climate conditions in explaining spatial distribution and dynamics of fuel characteristics. Our results showed that fuel characteristics strongly depend on the species composition of the overstory and understory layers. Fuel characteristics of both vegetation layers were significantly different and poorly correlated with each other. Although both strata showed significantly different rates of change in most fuel characteristics, the average changes were, in general, very small for the time window considered. Forests in the warmest and driest environments showed the highest flammability characteristics in both overstory and understory layers in contrast to mountain communities. We did not find, however, a remarkable effect of climatic conditions on the rates of change of fuel characteristics during the study period. Altogether, these findings confirm the importance of considering the spatial variation of fuel characteristics of different vegetation strata separately and provide critical information on forest vulnerability to develop appropriate fire mitigation policies in Mediterranean ecosystems.
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | artículo biblioteca |
| Published: |
Elsevier
2021-06-15
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| Subjects: | Fire, Understory flammability, Forest vulnerability, Fuel models, Vegetation strata, |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/248610 http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100011033 http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100004837 http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100003329 |
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