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Relationships Between Wildfires, Management Modalities of Community Areas, and Ownership Types in Pine Forests of Mainland Portugal

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Abstract

Investigations of factors influencing wildfire risks in Mediterranean forest areas have rarely considered the possible influence of the ownership type and management modalities in forest areas owned and/or managed by rural communities, referred to as baldios in Portugal. This study aimed to analyse the relationship between forest ownership types and the management modalities of community forests in the distribution of wildfires in Pinus pinaster areas of Portugal over the past 40 years. We carried out a comparative analysis of P. pinaster forests and wildfires considering three ownership types (community, private, and state forests) and four different management modalities of the community lands (by local communities or local authorities through independent management or in co-management with national Forest Services). The protection status of the pine forests was also considered. We also evaluated the possible influence of topographic variables—elevation, slope, and aspect—and their relationships with ownership types, management modalities, and protection status. To evaluate the trends and making use of the existing cartography, the study period (1975 to 2017) was subdivided into three time periods (1975–1989, 1990–2009, and 2010–2017). The results revealed significant differences in the annual percentage of burned areas in different among ownership types but no differences among protected and unprotected areas. Baldios showed the highest percentage of burned area relative to their total area, but some differences between the management modalities are apparent. Furthermore, the proportion of burned area increased over the study period, particularly with a very large area burned in 2017, possibly reflecting climatic changes and a decrease in management activities. This indicates that forest management should be strengthened, with special attention to fuel management. Fuel reduction could be improved through the development of new bioeconomic activities in community forests.

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Notes

  1. The 'Forest Regime', whose history begins with the development of the first Forest Code in France in 1827, is a legal regime and can be defined as a set of special rules for the management, exploitation and enforcement of public and communal forests. It is a set of norms necessary not only to create, operate and preserve forest resources but also create and maintain forest cover, control the water regime, protect the floodplains, and decrease drylands or mountain soils erosion risks (Germano 2000).

  2. Both maps (2 and 3) are available on the website of the General Directorate for Territory (DGT 2018).

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Acknowledgements

FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) is acknowledged for Iryna Skulska’s doctoral grant PD/BD/113939/2015. We are especially grateful to the ICNF (Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas) and to the BALADI (National Federation of the Baldios) for providing data on baldios and for support in some parts of this work. We want to thank also our colleagues Catarina Sequeira for help with some technical issues and Leónia Nunes for comments on the draft. Finally, we would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, whose comments helped us to improve the article significantly.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Applied Ecology “Prof. Baeta Neves” (CEABN/InBIO), School of Agriculture, University of Lisbon, Tapada da Ajuda, 1349-017, Lisbon, Portugal

    I. Skulska, I. Duarte & F. C. Rego

  2. Department of Geography, University Complutense of Madrid, Profesor Aranguren s/n, 28040, Madrid, Spain

    C. Montiel-Molina

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  1. I. Skulska
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Skulska, I., Duarte, I., Rego, F.C. et al. Relationships Between Wildfires, Management Modalities of Community Areas, and Ownership Types in Pine Forests of Mainland Portugal. Small-scale Forestry 19, 231–251 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-020-09445-6

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