Fire Risk
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Increase area with reduced fire risk
Data collection in progress
Iberian Highlands
Spain
Problem: The absence of large herbivores brings with it the loss of key ecological processes such as grazing, browsing and trampling. This leads to encroachment of dense scrub and homogenization of the landscape by closed-canopy forest with very dense understory vegetation, increasing the extent and intensity of wildfires because of the large amounts of fuel available.
Action: The project is introducing natural grazing to the landscape. Grazing by large herbivores including bison, Przewalski’s horses and Tauros should create more open habitats that are less prone to wildfires.
Indicator: The amount of biomass (potential fuel for fires) present in the landscape will indicate the changing susceptibility of the habitat to fire since natural grazing was reintroduced.
Przewalski’s horses, which are being reintroduced as part of the project. Photo: Rewilding Spain.
Tauros, a species being released as part of the project. Photo: Rewilding Spain.
Methods
Rewilding Spain assesses vegetation biomass using field surveys and remote sensing images.
For the field surveys, they will use data collected from their habitat heterogeneity indicator to also quantify biomass, and therefore fire risk, in the landscape (Fig. 1). Vegetation structure and composition will be surveyed before and after the introduction of natural grazing and also at control sites where natural grazing has been excluded (a BACI design).
The vegetation data will be used to populate the Rothermel Fuel Model for each plot, which will provide a measure of susceptibility to fire. The four fuel model options, with the corresponding fuel load, that may be found in the habitat in the monitoring plots are:
1: Natural grasslands, stubble, annual and perennial herbaceous plants (1-2 tonnes/ha)
2: Pastures (5-10 tonnes/ha)
4: Thickets of about 2m. tall, repopulated or regenerated dense young trees (25-35 tonnes/ha)
7: Shrubs < 2 m, pine forests with undergrowth of flammable species (10-15 tonnes/ha)
Figure 1. An example of two 10x10m plots in Solanillos, one unfenced and one fenced to act as an ungrazed control. There are thirteen pairs of these plots across the project area.
Rewilding Spain will use the existing vegetation data to input the proportion of land that meets the criteria for the above four habitat/fuel load options, which will then provide a metric of fire susceptibility.
Results
Baseline data is currently being collected. This page will be updated once we have data to share.
References
Rothermel, Richard C. 1972. A mathematical model for predicting fire spread in wildland fuels. Res. Pap. INT-115. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station.
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