In 2022, wildfires devastated around 310,000 hectares of land in Spain, an area five times the size of the city of Madrid. This figure triples the amount of land burned in 2021, and given the ongoing climate crisis, the risk of wildfires is expected to increase in the coming years.
Faced with this situation, decision-makers and forest managers are confronted with an urgent challenge. There is a growing consensus on the need to conserve forests and promote the creation of resilient ecological zones as part of the solution.
Over the past three decades, scientific advances have enabled the development of ecological niche models. These provide maps that identify areas potentially suitable for certain species by statistically correlating known locations of species presence with various variables, including climate and soil type, among others.
Rubén G. Mateo, botanist and academic at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM), has worked on calibrating these models at various scales to provide useful information for managing areas devastated by megafires.
“Ecological niche models (ENMs) aim to recreate the relationships between species and their environments, allowing us to identify unexplored areas where these species could potentially exist. While these models are used in various fields of research, such as conservation plans and studies of exotic species, they had not yet been tested for the restoration of areas impacted by megafires,” explains the researcher.
Along with his team and in collaboration with researchers from the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) and the Forest Science Institute (ICIFOR-INIA, CSIC), Mateo has produced precise maps indicating the current and future suitability of certain areas for tree species affected by fires that occurred nearly two decades ago, in 2005. For this, they have considered both the current state of regeneration and projections of a 4.5°C increase in global average temperature by the end of this century.
The climate crisis presents an increasingly variable and dynamic scenario. Changes in rainfall patterns, hailstorms, more intense but less frequent precipitation events, and prolonged droughts are increasing the vulnerability of our forests to megafires. This requires equally dynamic solutions.
“We propose that post-fire restoration plans take into account the effects of climate change on forest regeneration. The use of ENMs can be an effective support tool for forest managers, providing more dynamic restoration plans,” concludes Rubén Mateo.
The findings of this research will be included in the doctoral thesis of Cristina Carrillo (ICIFOR, UPM), who is also researching the effects of burned wood management on the vulnerability of forests to future megafires.
Reference: Carrillo-García, C., Girola-Iglesias, L., Guijarro, M., Hernando, C., Madrigal, J., G. Mateo, R. 2022. Ecological niche models applied to post-megafire vegetation restoration in the context of climate change Science of The Total Environment
doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158858
