Wildfires vs. Sustainable Forest Partitioning

Conservation

Evangelia Frangedaki¹  Nikos D. Lagaros²  Demetris Koutsoyiannis³  Romanos Ioannidis³  Panayiotis Dimitriadis³  Ioannis Bairaktaris³  Theano Iliopoulou³  G.-Fivos Sargentis³ 

[1] Department III, Architectural Language, Communication and Design, School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens, 15780 Athens, Greece;Institute of Structural Analysis and Antiseismic Research, School of Civil Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 15780 Athens, Greece;Laboratory of Hydrology and Water Resources Development, School of Civil Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 15772 Athens, Greece;

关键词: fire;    wildfires;    megafires;    forest;    land use;    sustainability;   

DOI  :  10.3390/conservation2010013

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

There is a widespread perception that every year wildfires are intensifying on a global scale, something that is often used as an indicator of the adverse impacts of global warming. However, from the analysis of wildfires that have occurred in the US, Canada, and Mediterranean countries, a trend that justifies this perception could not be identified. Arguably, instead of blaming climate change, research on the mitigation of wildfires should be re-directed to forest management policy and practices. Forests are admirable and complex natural ecosystems, and fires, albeit devastating, can be attributed to both human activity and to natural processes that contribute to their rebirth, with the latter constituting an intrinsic and perpetual process of the forest ecosystem. Other than their important ecological value, forests are, in the 21st century, also a capital resource, for many people’s livelihoods depend on them. In this study, we proposed a method for taking mitigation measures against wildfires based on the partitioning of forests, considering both the protection of the ecosystem and the inhabitants and aiming to utilize their co-dependent nature for the general protection and preservation of forests. As a case study, we analyzed the current devastating fire in Euboea (occurred in August 2021), initially in terms of the spatio-temporal progression of the actual wildfire that lasted several days and then by examining how an implementation of the proposed method in the study area could contribute to both the recovery of the ecosystem and the enhancement of the quality of life of the inhabitants as well as their long-term protection.

【 授权许可】

Unknown