Portugal and Chile_ Longing for sustainable forestry

Environmental Science and Policy xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

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Discussion

Portugal and Chile: Longing for sustainable forestry while rising from the ashes Susana Gómez-Gonzáleza,b,⁎, Fernando Ojedaa, Paulo M. Fernandesc a

Departamento de Biología-IVAGRO, Universidad de Cádiz, Campus Río San Pedro, 11510, Puerto Real, Spain Centre for Science and Resilience Research (CR)2, Blanco Encalada 2002, piso 4, Santiago, Chile c Centro de Investigação e Tecnologias Agroambientais e Biológicas (CITAB), Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Quinta de Prados, 5001-801, Vila Real, Portugal b

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Biodiversity Ecosystem services Fire ecology Forest plantation Fuel management Sustainability

The recent catastrophic wildfires in Portugal and Chile shared similar features, not just because they developed under extreme weather conditions but also because extensive forest plantations were involved. Dense forest plantations of flammable pine and eucalypt species favor the development of high-intensity large fires, threatening people and the forest industry sustainability under increasingly frequent and severe drought events. Preventive land-use planning and cost-effective fuel management are key elements of sustainable forestry. Understanding the fire ecology context prior to plantation establishment is also crucial for the success of fire management planning. Although the forest industry has contributed to the economy of these countries, improved regulation and science-based management policies are strongly needed. Fuel treatment strategies can be optimized by risk-based modeling approaches, and should be mandatory in wildland-urban interfaces. The tragedy caused by these wildfires is an opportunity to change towards more sustainable landscape arrangements that reconcile ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, and protection from life-threatening wildfires.

Last 17–21 June 2017, a large wildfire caused by faults in the electricity distribution grid raged in central Portugal, killing and injuring respectively 64 and 254 people (BBC, 2017). Worldwide it was the most tragic wildfire event since the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Australia, burning ca. 30 kha in a rugged landscape extensively afforested with eucalypt and pine plantations. Also in central Portugal, 45 human lives were further claimed by the unprecedented hurricanedriven fires that burned ca. 200 kha on 15–16 October 2017. These events resemble the mega-fires that occurred in Chile during the last austral summer (December 2016–February 2017), causing at least 11 fatalities, affecting thousands of people, and destroying some towns (CONAF, 2017a). More than half of the 600 kha burnt in Chile were forest plantations akin to those in Portugal (CONAF, 2017a). Fastgrowing, high-density forest stands planted for commercial purposes are highly flammable and favor the development of large and severe wildfires when established over large continuous tracts of the landscape (Fernandes et al., 2016, Fig. 1). Because of this, the sustainability of the forest industry and the effectiveness of environmental policies are currently under debate in the media (BBC, 2017). Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of large fires worldwide (Jolly et al., 2015). When extreme fire weather

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conditions combine with abundant fuel, fire spread and intensity surpass the capacity of any fire suppression organization. Effects of climate change on the fire regime are out of human control but we can work to re-shape the composition and quantity of fuels in our landscapes making them less prone to large fires in anticipation of a warmer future. In this sense, preventive land-use planning and cost-effective fuel management are key elements of sustainable forestry. Reducing fuel continuity and load by pruning and thinning reduces fire intensity and the likelihood of crown fire occurrence in Pinus radiata (Cruz et al., 2017) and Pinus pinaster plantations (Fernandes and Rigolot, 2007), at least under non-extreme weather conditions. Prescribed underburning is the most effective way of tackling surface fuel accumulation, but its feasibility is determined by bark thickness (hence by tree size and species; Bellows et al., 2016) and can favor fire-adapted weeds (Úbeda and Sarricolea, 2016). In the case of eucalypt plantations, recent research indicates that fuel removal is needed at shorter intervals (e.g. disk harrowing every 2–6 years) than commonly recommended, particularly when the terrain is steep and productivity is high (Mirra et al., 2017). Fuel-treated areas need to be strategically placed in the landscape considering not only the fire risk to human population and relevant ecosystem services, but also the effectiveness (i.e. likelihood of

Corresponding author at: Departamento de Biología-IVAGRO, Universidad de Cádiz, Campus Río San Pedro, 11510, Puerto Real, Spain. E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Gómez-González).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2017.11.006 Received 24 July 2017; Received in revised form 7 November 2017; Accepted 10 November 2017 1462-9011/ © 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Please cite this article as: Gómez-González, S., Environmental Science and Policy (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2017.11.006


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Fig. 1. Examples of wildfires in forest plantations from Portugal and Chile. A) Fire burning an unmanaged Eucalyptus globulus plantation in Terras de Bouro (NW Portugal), in September 2009. B) Burned landscape after a wildfire in an extensive forest plantation (dominated by Eucalyptus spp. and Pinus radiata) that occurred during the austral summer of 2014 in Valparaíso (Central Chile).

and water provision. In this sense, it would be desirable to reduce fuel homogeneity at the landscape scale by diversifying land use and restoring native forest patches as buffer zones, particularly in steep slopes and along the watersheds (Little et al., 2015). Plantation forestry in Portugal and Chile has contributed to their macro-economic development and is a relevant source of income for farmers that own land unsuitable for agriculture. However, the rapid establishment of extensive commercial tree plantations has often been accompanied by deficient environmental regulations, loss of biodiversity and acute conflicts with local communities (Miranda et al., 2016; Mateus and Fernandes, 2014). Despite that, this model has been regarded as successful and sustainable (FAO, 2016), and did expand to other countries in South America (e.g. Uruguay and Brazil). From 1974 to date, near 3 million ha of land have been planted with exotic trees in Chile with the help of public subsidies, causing the loss of hundreds of thousands of hectares of native forest (Miranda et al., 2016) plus the concomitant increase in fire danger. In Portugal, around 1.5 million ha are occupied by Pinus pinaster and Eucalyptus globulus (16% of the country) (Rego et al., 2013), but most of the stands are either undermanaged or abandoned due to decreasing rural population and dire economic prospects. In many areas of the Iberian Peninsula, these plantations have replaced native Mediterranean heathlands of high ecological value, jeopardizing their biodiversity (e.g. Andrés and Ojeda, 2002). Besides, the establishment of forest plantations generally needs aggressive soil preparation techniques (e.g. ploughing and terracing) that eliminate native vegetation and decimate soil seed-banks. As the complexity of the root system diminishes, soil erosion risk increases, particularly when tree canopy elimination by fire leaves the altered soil open to the erosive effects of wind and precipitation (Martins et al., 2013). Therefore, most of the negative effects commonly linked to wildfires (irreversible loss of biodiversity and dramatic soil erosion) are actually promoted by afforestation per se. Paradoxically, forestry corporations and governments justify afforestation programs and policies by the need to protect biodiversity and recover degraded soils (CONAF, 2016). Understanding fire regimes and their ecological and evolutionary context is crucial to develop a sustainable forest policy in fire-prone ecosystems. Central Chile and Portugal are fire-prone because of their Mediterranean-type climate and its marked seasonality that makes vegetation dry and flammable during summer. Although similar in climate and vegetation physiognomy (sclerophyllous shrublands), these regions have different fire histories (on an evolutionary time-scale) that explain differences in plant functional traits in response to fire. Lightning-ignited fires have not been frequent in Central Chile during the Quaternary due to particular oceanic and topographic features, such

impacting wildfire growth and severity) of a given fuel treatment under given environmental and topographic conditions (Cruz et al., 2017). The fuel treatment effort should of course be commensurate with the likelihood of experiencing a wildfire; on average and per year, fuels are treated on one fifth of the forest industry estate in Portugal, with wildfire affecting only 0.7% of the area (CELPA, 2015), and while this indicates a successful fire management program it also suggests that cost effectiveness is low. Integrated fire-forest management planning and risk-based decision support systems based on modeling approaches assist on identifying and reconciling optimal harvesting and fuel treatment schedules to reduce fire losses and increase timber production (Acuna et al., 2010; Calkin et al., 2011; González-Olabarria and Pukkala, 2011). Nonetheless, despite significant scientific advances on modeling approaches to support management decisions, more research is needed to reduce uncertainties related to climate change (Calkin et al., 2011). Extensive unmanaged fast-growth forest plantations located in the rural-urban interface are threatening the resident human population and they should be prioritized in management planning (Reszca and Fuentes, 2015; Bartlett, 2012). Fuel load reduction techniques combined with a minimum buffer zone of 150 m is advised when pine plantations adjoin urban areas (Bartlett, 2012). In Chile, for example, measures of fire prevention have targeted mainly the Valparaíso region in response to several tragic fires that have impacted the wildlandurban interface in the last years (Úbeda and Sarricolea, 2016). However, the Maule and Bío-Bío regions, which concentrate the bulk of Chile’s forest mass, deserve more attention because of high population density in rural areas and increasingly frequent mega-fires (CONAF, 2017b). Commercial forestry and farming account for 24% of the net anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, in part due to forest fires (Core Writing Team et al., 2014). Nevertheless, the increasing global rate of afforestation is frequently misinterpreted as a positive trend justified by the possibility of this sector becoming a net CO2 sink in the next future (Core Writing Team et al., 2014). The Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations (FAO, 2016) reported that Chile increased its forest cover, although it corresponded in part to the replacement of native forests by commercial exotic plantations (Miranda et al., 2016). The use of the term “forests” to jointly encompass commercial tree plantations and native forests is not appropriate since their ecological processes, as well as the ecosystem services they bring, are profoundly different. Unlike native forests, pine and eucalypt plantations can actually and substantially decrease water yield, which offsets their alleged carbon sequestration benefits (Farley et al., 2005). Regional land use planning could be strategically designed to improve both fire mitigation 2


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as the cold Humboldt Current and the Andes mountain range, that limit the formation of convective thunderstorms (Keeley et al., 2012). As a consequence, adaptive responses to fire in the Chilean vegetation are not as frequent or developed as in other Mediterranean-type regions and current anthropogenic fires have detrimental ecological effects (Gómez-González et al., 2017). Hence, wildfires must be suppressed in Central Chile for the sake of biodiversity conservation. Instead, most native vegetation in Portugal is dominated by fire-adapted species as a result of a long history of recurrent wildfires and its role as a driver of plant evolution in the western Mediterranean Basin (Keeley et al., 2012). However, since Mediterranean plant species are generally adapted to specific fire regimes and not to fire per se, both the complete suppression and the increase in the frequency or severity of fire (in relation to the natural fire regime) will negatively impact plant diversity (Keeley et al., 2012). Despite the ecological differences between Portugal and Central Chile, human pressure is strong in both regions and fire frequency from human-made ignitions is sufficiently high to threaten the natural resilience of vegetation in some areas. In this sense, recently developed models could be used to design accurate fuel treatment planning that considers the natural fire return interval of the ecosystem (Rachmawati et al., 2016). In addition, environmental education policies should be focused not only on helping people understand and control human activities as the most likely source of ignition, but also understand the fire ecology of the ecosystems they live in. The environmental and socio-economic impacts of wildfires in Chile and Portugal might even increase in the next decades as higher fuel hazard from commercial forestry and land abandonment will be accompanied by an upward trend in drought (Moritz et al., 2012). This is expected to threaten the economic sustainability of the forest industry in the long term (Rego et al., 2013). Forestry needs better regulation through environmental laws and regional planning to optimize plantation design, ensure adequate fuel management, and diminish risks to people. Public subsidies to forestry would be justifiable only if efficient fire management is guaranteed. On the other hand, forest sustainability certifications that enhance the market value of timber (e.g. Forest Stewardship Council) should explicitly highlight the importance of implementing fire prevention and biodiversity protection strategies to accomplish their criteria (Forest Stewardship Council, 1996). The tragedy caused by the 2017 wildfires is an opportunity, in Chile, Portugal and elsewhere, to change towards less fire prone, more diverse and resilient landscapes providing sustainable ecosystem services to society. Although the current forest policy of Chile recognizes these needs and includes the restoration of native forests in its objectives, the policy spirit continues to be the expansion of the forestry industry suggesting that the old model paradigm will remain for the next two decades (CONAF, 2016). The complex socio-ecological context of these countries – increasingly dwindling rural population, overwhelming dominance of privately held land, high fire risk precluding investment in options other than short-rotation forestry – suggests that more sustainable, resilient landscapes can only be achieved through institutional regulations and subsidy policies that assure the maintenance of key ecosystem services for their population’s wellbeing.

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Acknowledgments This work was supported by project HERRIZA (CGL2015-64007-P, MINECO-FEDER, Spain), Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (FONDAP/CONICYT 15110009, Chile), project FIREXTR (PTDC/ATPGEO/0462/2014) with funds from FEDER—European Regional Development Fund (COMPETE 2020–POCI) and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. References Acuna, M.A., Palma, C.D., Cui, W., Martell, D.L., Weintraub, A., 2010. Integrated spatial fire and forest management planning. Can. J. For. Res. 40, 2370–2383.

Susana Gómez-González is a researcher interested in plant community ecology,

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S. Gómez-González et al. particularly in fire ecology and plant invasions in Mediterranean-type ecosystems.

Paulo M. Fernandes is an Associate Professor of Forestry. His research is mainly focused on the behaviour and ecology of wildland fire from the forest and fire management perspectives, mainly in topics of field-based assessment and modelling of fire characteristics and effects in various vegetation types. Current interests include also the drivers of fire regimes, large fires, and fire danger rating.

Fernando Ojeda is an Associate Professor of Botany with research interests in (i) the role of fire in the evolution of mediterranean plants; (ii) the ecology and evolution of heathland plants; and (iii) the biogeography, biodiversity and conservation of Mediterranean heathlands.

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