Pau Brunet-Navarro

Greece is facing a wildfire crisis that parallels many other countries in fire-prone regions around the globe. Recent wildfire data for Greece point to an alarming trend of increasing fire size and severity catalyzed by climate change, lack of forest and fuel management, urban expansion into wildlands around major population centers, and rural exodus from areas that traditionally supported fire-resilient land uses. Fire management in Greece has long emphasized suppression with relatively little attention to prevention and coordination. In this paper, we identify key factors that are slowing progress towards a solution to the Greek wildfire crisis, including the current legislative framework around wildfire management that has contributed to conflicts and inefficiency. We then discuss specific policies to rebalance the current suppression emphasis by integrating new prevention strategies aiming to create fire-resilient landscapes and reduce wildfire impacts, widely adopt the use of technology, and enhance stakeholder cooperation for more efficient fire suppression. We also highlight how optimizing landscape scale management of fuels is contributing solutions to the wildfire crisis, specifically from the EU-funded FIRE-RES project.

Extreme Wildfire Events (EWE) exceeding control capacity are becoming a major environmental, economic and social threat, not only in fire-prone regions in Southern Europe, America and Oceania, but also in new areas such as Central and Northern Europe. The EU H2020 FIRE-RES project (https://fire-res.eu/) aims to provide Europe with the necessary capacity to avoid collapse in the face of EWE, which are projected to increase as the result of a harsher climate.FIRE-RES is a 4-year project (2021–2025) whose scope is to effectively promote the implementation of a holistic fire management approach and support the transition towards more resilient landscapes and communities to EWE in Europe. FIRE-RES brings together a transdisciplinary, multi-actor consortium of 35 partners, formed by researchers, wildfire agencies, technological companies, industry and civil society from 13 countries, linking to broader networks in science and disaster reduction management. The project is implementing a total of 34 Innovation Actions across a set of eleven living labs representing different environments in Europe and Chile. These Innovation Actions are framed within 5 topics: Ecosystem Conservation and Landscape design; Emergency, Risk Mapping and Sustainable Fire Management Models; Economic drivers, Incentives and Insurance Solutions; Governance, Society, Communication and Risk Awareness; and Advanced Technology Solutions - Support Tools for Integrated Fire Management. Its final mission is to boost the socio-ecological transition of the European Union towards a fire-resilient continent by developing a stream of innovative actions.In its last year, the FIRE-RES consortium is already having results from the implementation of its 34 Innovation Actions. In this talk, selected results related to disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, innovations in disaster management, and critical infrastructure protection will be presented.

Economic profitability of harvested softwood in Southwestern Europe is limited for low quality logs. Some social and environmental consequences of low incomes of rural activities are rural depopulation and accumulation of biomass in unmanaged forests. The energy efficiency of buildings could be improved as construction material employing local bioresources that are currently used to manufacture products of low added value. Here, the IMIP project (Innovative Eco-Construction System Based on Interlocking Modular Insulation Wood & Cork-Based Panels) aimed to support the change towards a low carbon economy using bioproducts (pinewood and cork) for smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth with a special focus on the public construction sector is presented. The main objective of the IMIP project is to design, validate and implement an innovative ecological construction system based on natural biological materials to improve energy efficiency in public buildings from the construction, use and demolition phases. The project also develops a tool to professionals from the construction sector (architects and engineers) and researchers to assess the carbon footprint of buildings. The products of the project have the ambition to improve the economic, social and environmental situation of rural areas of Southwestern Europe.

Key message: Self-thinning lines are species- and climate-specific, and they should be used when assessing the capacity of different forest stands to increase biomass/carbon storage. Context: The capacity of forests to store carbon can help to mitigate the effects of atmospheric CO₂ rise and climate change. The self-thinning relationship (average size measure ∼ stand density) has been used to identify the potential capacity of biomass storage at a given density and to evaluate the effect of stand management on stored carbon. Here, a study that shows how the self-thinning line varies with species and climate is presented. Aims: Our main objective is thus testing whether species identity and climate affect the self-thinning line and therefore the potential amount of carbon stored in living biomass. Methods: The Ecological and Forest Inventory of Catalonia was used to calculate the self-thinning lines of four common coniferous species in Catalonia, NE Iberian Peninsula (Pinus halepensis, Pinus nigra, Pinus sylvestris and Pinus uncinata). Quadratic mean diameter at breast height was chosen as the average size measure. The self-thinning lines were used to predict the potential diameter at a given density and study the effect of environmental variability. Results: Species-specific self-thinning lines were obtained. The self-thinning exponent was consistent with the predicted values of −3/2 and −4/3 for mass-based scaling for all species except P. sylvestris. Species identity and climatic variability within species affected self-thinning line parameters. Conclusion: Self-thinning lines are species-specific and are affected by climatic conditions. These relationships can be used to refine predictions of the capacity of different forest stands to increase biomass/carbon storage.

The use of wood products is often promoted as a climate change mitigation option to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. In previous literature, we identified longevity and recycling rate as two determining factors that influence the carbon stock in wood products, but no studies have predicted the effect of improved wood use on carbon storage over time. In this study, we aimed at evaluating changes in the lifespan and the recycling rate as two options for enhancing carbon stock in wood products for different time horizons. We first explored the behaviour over time of both factors in a theoretical simulation, and then calculated their effect for the European wood sector of the future. The theoretical simulation shows that the carbon stock in wood products increases linearly when increasing the average lifespan of wood products and exponentially when improving the recycling rate. The emissions savings under the current use of wood products in Europe in 2030 were estimated at 57.65 Mt carbon dioxide (CO₂) per year. This amount could be increased 5 Mt CO₂ if average lifespan increased 19.54 % or if recycling rate increased 20.92 % in 2017. However, the combination of both strategies could increase the emissions saving almost 5 Mt CO₂ more by 2030. Incrementing recycling rate of paper and paperboard is the best short-term strategy (2030) to reduce emissions, but elongating average lifespan of wood-based panels is a better strategy for longer term periods (2046).

In addition to forest ecosystems, wood products are carbon pools that can be strategically managed to mitigate climate change. Wood product models (WPMs) simulating the carbon balance of wood production, use and end of life can complement forest growth models to evaluate the mitigation potential of the forest sector as a whole.WPMs can be used to compare scenarios of product use and explore mitigation strategies. A considerable number ofWPMs have been developed in the last three decades, but there is no review available analysing their functionality and performance. This study analyses and compares 41WPMs. One surprising initial result was that we discovered the erroneous implementation of a few concepts and assumptions in some of the models. We further described and compared the models using six model characteristics (bucking allocation,industrial processes,carbon pools,product removal,recyclingandsubstitution effects)and three model‐use characteristics (system boundaries,model initializationandevaluation of results). Using a set of indicators based on the model characteristics, we classified models using a hierarchical clustering technique and differentiated them according to their increasing degrees of complexity and varying levels of user support. For purposes of simulating carbon stock in wood products, models with a simple structure may be sufficient, but to compare climate change mitigation options, complex models are needed. The number of models has increased substantially over the last ten years, introducing more diversity and accuracy. Calculation of substitution effects and recycling has also become more prominent. However, the lack of data is still an important constraint for a more realistic estimation of carbon stocks and fluxes. Therefore, if the sector wants to demonstrate the environmental quality of its products, it should make it a priority to provide reliable life cycle inventory data, particularly regarding aspects of time and location.