Restauración de montes quemados en condiciones mediterráneas

Abstract

Wildfires may produce ecosystem damages that would require post-fire mitigation and/or restoration actions. The question is what are the criteria to identify those burned areas that show high degradation risk in order to plan and prioritise restoration projects. To address that question it is necessary to start with the analysis of fire impact, and from that analysis to derive predictive tools for assessing the fragility and regeneration capacity of burned ecosystems. The identification of post-fire degradation mechanisms provides the basis for developing the corresponding specific mitigation/restoration actions. The diagnostic of ecological impact of wildfires together with the established forest management objectives allow deriving mitigation/restoration strategies and the subsequent implementation projects. We present our experience on the evaluation of post-fire ecosystem vulnerability and on the assessment of restoration planning derived from recent and ongoing EC research projects. This includes the development of short-term restoration techniques suited for degraded soils and dry Mediterranean conditions, where fire-induced degradation is complicated with water shortage for regenerating vegetation.