DEVELOPING INNOVATIVE MODELS AND TECHNIQUES FOR INTEGRATED FUEL MANAGEMENT FOR FIRE PREVENTION IN MEDITERRANEAN AND TEMPERATE FORESTS
Funding source: PRIN2009, Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research. Coordinator: Prof. Piermaria Corona, University of Tuscia. Duration: 11/10/17-13/10/17.
Project consortium:
- Università degli Studi della Tuscia
- Università degli Studi di Torino
- Università della Calabria
- Università degli Studi di Firenze
- Università degli Studi di Bari
Project activities
The research program aims to experiment the integrated application of innovative models and techniques for strategic fuel management in Mediterranean and temperate forests and wildland-urban interface areas (WUI). The program will address the following questions:
1. what is the potential of airborne LIDAR data for decision support in forest fire prevention, with particular reference to quantitative characterization, three-dimensional representation (3D) and mapping of forest fuels?
2. which fuel models characterize Mediterranean and temperate forests and WUI areas in Italy and what are the fuel management techniques to reduce dangerous biomass in such operational contexts?
3. what is the contribution of fire prevention silviculture and prescribed burning on fire behavior?
4. what is the effectiveness of prescribed burning in strategic fuel management for wildfire prevention?
To answer these questions the research program will perform the following interrelated tasks with reference to specific case studies in test areas:
- data collection by various survey techniques (dendrometrical and airborne LIDAR measurements, vegetation fuel survey) in areas representative of the variability of ecological and silvicultural conditions that characterize the Mediterranean and temperate forest environment with higher vulnerability to wildfires and WUI areas in Italy;
- extraction from airborne LIDAR data of information layers exploitable by modeling tools for simulating fire behavior and evaluating the effects of fuel management;
- simulation of silvicultural treatments for fuel management in forest and WUI areas;
- field experimentation of forest fuel management interventions and analysis of the applied work systems and processes; this research activity aims also to assess the economic-environmental sustainability of the applied work systems and processes;
- development of a protocol to plan, design and assess the effectiveness of prescribed burning for forest fuel strategic management at stand and landscape scales.
Publications
2011
Moreira F., Viedma O., Arianoutsou M., Curt T., Koutsias N., Rigolot E., Barbati A., Corona P., Vaz P., Xanthopoulos G., Mouillot F., Bilgili E., 2011. Landscape-wildfire interactions in southern Europe: Implications for landscape management. Journal of Environmental Management 92: 2389-2402. DOI:10.1016/j.jenvman.2011.06.028.
Corona P., Agrimi M., Baffetta F., Barbati A., Chiriacò M.V., Fattorini L., Pompei E., Valentini R, Mattioli W., 2011. Extending large-scale forest inventories to assess urban forests. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment. DOI:10.1007/s10661-011-2050-6
2010
Lindner M., Maroschek M., Netherer S., Kremer A., Barbati A., Garcia-Gonzalo J., Seidl R., Delzon S., Corona P., Kolström M., Lexer M. J., Marchetti M., 2010. Climate change impacts, adaptive capacity, and vulnerability of European forest ecosystems. Forest Ecology and Management, 259 (4): 698-709, DOI:10.1016/j.foreco.2009.09.023.