Juan Ramón Molina

This study evaluates the financial profitability and carbon sequestration in mixed native forests of the Roble-Raulí-Coigüe and evergreen types in the southern macrozone of Chile, integrating both ecosystem services into forest management decision-making. The Faustmann model and dynamic programming were applied to determine the optimal rotation periods and Land Expectation Value (LEV) under two scenarios: exclusive timber production and combined timber and carbon production. The results indicate that mixed forests consistently outperform monocultures in terms of profitability, especially in 25%–75% mix configurations and moderate densities (2000 trees/ha). The observed range of 25%–75% across different tree species is determined by the interplay of two critical factors: the average annual growth rate (AAGR) of biomass and the opportunity cost of the forest rotation. In fast-growing species, the upper limit (75%) reflects an optimisation towards early carbon sequestration, whilst in slow-growing species, the ratio shifts towards the lower limit (25%) to compensate for longer rotation periods and associated biotic risks. This range acts as an efficiency frontier that balances biological productivity with the stability of the accumulated carbon stock. The inclusion of the economic value of carbon increased the LEV and extended the optimal rotation periods, confirming the relevance of integrating ecosystem services into forest planning. These findings suggest that mixed native forests represent a competitive and sustainable alternative to monocultures, contributing to climate change mitigation and income diversification for forest owners.

Wildfire activity in the Iberian Peninsula (581,353 km²) is highly heterogeneous due to strong gradients in climate, topography, vegetation, disturbances, land use, and management. This spatial variability challenges fire modeling, risk assessment, and fuel reduction strategies across contrasting regions. Previous efforts to map fire regimes succesfully used clustering of historical or remote-sensed fire data. However, the resulting zones were often large and spatially fragmented, rendering them challenging to integrate into landscape scale stochastic wildfire modeling.To address this, we delineated pyroregions, defined as spatial units with generally homogeneous fire regime conditions, to support subsequent fire weather characterization and the definition of modeling domains for stochastic wildfire simulations. Our objective was to generate contiguous spatial units that exhibit both similar historical fire incidence and consistent fire-weather and topographic characteristics. To achieve this, we populated subwatersheds (obtained from HydroBASINS; n = 4,409; mean area 13,391 ha) with contemporary fire regime descriptors derived from burned area and ignition records –sourced from national (AGIF for Portugal and EGIF for Spain) and European (EFFIS) databases– complemented with fuel moisture (Camprubí et al., 2022; 10.5281/zenodo.6784663) and weather data (ERA5-Land reanalysis data). Descriptors included annual ignition density, annual and summer burned area, wind direction distributions, and fuel moisture content for live woody and fine fuels in the period 2001-2024. Pyroregions were obtained via spatially constrained agglomerative clustering with Ward linkage, enforcing contiguity using a Queen connectivity matrix, which ensured that merges occurred only between adjacent subwatersheds. Following a two-step aggregation scheme, we first delineated 16 broad pyroregions representing major wildfire-regime zones and then partitioned them into 78 similarly sized subareas (pyromes; mean area 7,570 km²) for modeling applications. Finally, boundaries were refined to reduce sharp transitions associated with subwatershed geometry and to produce smoother contours. The resulting map captured transboundary similarities and contrasts in fire regimes and revealed clear structure, including altitudinal gradients and a marked Atlantic to Mediterranean contrast, with large contiguous regions over the inner mesetas and major depressions, and a near continuous coastal belt.

This study evaluates the financial profitability and carbon sequestration in mixed native forests of the Roble–Raulí–Coigüe and evergreen types in the southern macrozone of Chile, integrating both ecosystem services into forest management decision-making. The Faustmann model and dynamic programming were applied to determine the optimal rotation periods and Land Expectation Value (LEV) under two scenarios: exclusive timber production and combined timber and carbon production. The results indicate that mixed forests consistently outperform monocultures in terms of profitability, especially in 25%-75% mix configurations and moderate densities (2000 trees/ha). The inclusion of the economic value of carbon increased the LEV and extended the optimal rotation periods, confirming the relevance of integrating ecosystem services into forest planning. These findings suggest that mixed native forests represent a competitive and sustainable alternative to monocultures, contributing to climate change mitigation and income diversification for forest owners.

Background: The assessment of suppression performance is gaining importance owing to budget constraints and the increasing prevalence of large wildfires. Aims: This study evaluates the effectiveness, cost-benefit and cost effectiveness of fire management in Andalusia using indices that combine burned area, suppression costs and avoided economic damage, examining the factors influencing these indices. Methods: Indices were calculated based on observed wildfire behavior and operational data from the official database (2011–2019), supplemented with simulated fire behavior and economic impacts. Key results: Suppression efforts prevented the burning of 67% of the potentially affected area, and each unit of cost invested averted approximately three units of potential economic losses from wildfires. Suppression performance varied across administrative divisions, decreasing with higher fire growth rates but improving with longer control times. Early-season fires were less effectively contained, whereas late-season fires were more cost-effective. Conclusions: This novel evaluation in Spain identifies the main drivers of suppression performance, offering insights for fire agency operations. We proposed the modified Management Index (mMI) as a more robust measure of cost-effectiveness than the Management Index currently published and applied by other authors. Implications: Assessing wildfire suppression effectiveness guides intervention prioritization, adaptive resource allocation and operational strategies, while providing evidence-based justification for the value of assets protected relative to firefighting investment.

En las últimas décadas, la problemática relacionada con los incendios forestales se ha intensificado, especialmente en la cuenca Mediterránea, lo que genera una grave amenaza para los ecosistemas y las poblaciones humanas. Aunque han disminuido en número, los incendios son de mayor intensidad y severidad, superando la capacidad de extinción (incendios de sexta generación). Las causas de este aumento son diversas: factores socioeconómicos (despoblación, cambio de uso de suelo), gestión forestal deficiente, políticas inadecuadas y el cambio climático, agravados por la desinformación y sensacionalismo mediático. En este contexto socioambiental y de necesidad de información es necesario reforzar la capacidad de los nuevos especialistas en las actividades de prevención y restauración mediante diferentes estrategias. Por un lado, mediante mejoras en la gestión forestal, lo que conlleva la creación de masas forestales más resistentes a la propagación de los incendios forestales y con mayor capacidad de regeneración natural; por otro lado, actuando sobre las causas que originan la ignición, es decir, desarrollando concienciación social sobre las mismas. El proyecto Plantando Cara al Fuego (PCF) es una iniciativa que busca mejorar la concienciación ambiental y la participación ciudadana en la lucha frente a los incendios forestales, mediante su implicación en proyectos donde se aplican los conocimientos académicos a necesidades de la comunidad. Para ello, PCF desarrolla proyectos de innovación educativa basados en Aprendizaje-Servicio (ApS), metodología que integra la formación universitaria con la prevención y la restauración forestal. El objetivo de este trabajo es recopilar experiencias desarrolladas entre 2020 y 2025 en distintas comunidades autónomas españolas en las que el estudiantado universitario de titulaciones diversas ha desarrollado proyectos de ApS, contribuyendo a resolver problemáticas reales de sus comunidades ligadas a los incendios forestales mediante el diseño y desarrollo de actividades en colaboración con entidades públicas y privadas. Así pues, se analizan 35 proyectos, clasificados en 5 categorías (prevención, restauración, formación, multidisciplinar y divulgación), junto con indicadores de impacto educativo y social de la iniciativa: número de estudiantes implicados, empresas e instituciones colaboradoras, productos generados, TFGs o TFMs defendidos o alcance real de estos proyectos en términos poblacionales. Los resultados evidencian que el ApS fortalece la competencia profesional y el compromiso ambiental del alumnado, contribuyendo a la gestión sostenible del territorio.

Background: Climate and land-use changes are leading to landscape homogenization and fire regime modification in many fire-prone ecosystems. Controlled burns are increasingly being used as a landscape management tool, and a full understanding of the characteristics and impacts of this practice is essential. Here we compared a high-moderate intensity controlled burn, carried out outside the normal prescribed burning period, with a wildfire in Atlantic shrublands (NW Iberian Peninsula) which occurred only one week after the controlled burn. We assessed fire behavior, fire severity, and fuel load reduction under different fire behaviors/ignition patterns in both types of fires. Fire behavior was analyzed using weather stations, thermocouples, unmanned aerial vehicles, and photos, and fire severity was assessed in the field using the Composite Burn Index, the post-fire branch diameter, and the percentage of smoldering, and also via remote sensing metrics. Results: The wildfire showed higher values for most fire intensity and severity parameters, although the controlled burn was still highly effective for fuel reduction, with over 93% of fuel eliminated. Soil smoldering was much more extensive in the wildfire site (95%) compared to the controlled burn site (17%). Within the controlled burn, ignition pattern influenced fire behavior and impacts: flanking fire produced high aboveground fuel consumption while minimizing soil smoldering, unlike head fire which led to greater soil impact. Remote sensing fire severity metrics derived from multispectral and radar imagery did not detect differences between the controlled burn and the wildfire, probably due to the nearly complete vegetation consumption in both cases. Conclusions: We show that, in Atlantic shrublands, where controlled burning is currently underused, it can be a useful tool for fuel reduction. Moreover, by choosing appropriate ignition patterns, the impacts on soils can be minimized while still maintaining operational effectiveness. Even under the exceptional scenario of high fire intensity and severity for our controlled burn, wildfire showed higher values of most intensity and severity parameters, probably due to lower fine fuel moisture, higher wind speeds, and a wider fire front.

The assessment of the economic vulnerability of natural disasters is a necessary step in the evaluation of any risks. This study proposes the approach implemented under the H2020 FirEurisk project to value the economic damage of wildfires on a European scale. Economic damage is assessed as the net value change in natural (agricultural and forestry resources and their ecosystem services) and manufactured assets under simulated fire intensity, taking into consideration the time necessary for natural capital to recover to the pre-damaged conditions. We show minimum, maximum, and average damage for European countries and map the critical areas. Damages to provisioning-ecosystem services are more pronounced in Central Europe because of the lower resilience of ecosystems compared to the Mediterranean, suggesting that mitigation measures (such as managing vegetation to reduce fuel; improving access to fire services; and engaging communities through education, agriculture, and forest management participation) must be enforced. We are confident that the approach proposed may stimulate further research to test the goodness of the estimates proposed and suggest where it is more appropriate to invest in fire prevention.

Urbanization is a driving force of landscape transformation. One of the ecosystems most vulnerable to urban expansion processes is montane forests located in high altitude mountainous regions. Despite their significance for biodiversity, regulation of the hydrological cycle, stability, prevention of soil erosion, and potential for organic carbon storage, these forest ecosystems show high vulnerability and risk due to the global urbanization process. We analyzed the potential variations produced by land cover change in some attributes related to soil organic matter in transitional forest fragments due to the expansion of a predominantly urban matrix landscape. We identified and characterized a fragment of a high montane evergreen forest in the Western Cordillera of the Northern Andes located in the urban limits of Quito. Then, we comparatively analyzed the variations in the attributes associated with soil organic carbon: soil organic matter, density, texture, nitrogen, phosphorus, and pH. We also considered the following soil coverages: forest, eucalyptus plantations, and grassland. We viewed the latter two as hinge coverages between forests and urban expansion. Finally, we estimated variations in soil organic carbon stock in the three analyzed coverages. For the montane forest fragment, we identified 253 individuals distributed among 18 species, corresponding to 10 families and 14 genera. We found significant variations in soil attributes associated with organic matter and an estimated 66% reduction in the carbon storage capacity of montane soils when they lose their natural cover and are replaced by Eucalyptus globulus plantations. Urban planning strategies should consider the conservation and restoration of natural and degraded peri-urban areas, ensuring sustainability and utilizing nature-based solutions for global climate change adaptation and mitigation. Peri-urban agroforestry systems represent an opportunity to replace and restore conventional forestry or crop plantation systems in peri-urban areas that affect the structure and function of ecosystems and, therefore, the goods and services derived from them.