Andrea Duane

University of California, Davis | UCD · Department of Environmental Science and Policy

Extreme fire severity patterns driven by climate change have deep consequences on vegetation, subsequent fire regimes and have consequences on the effectiveness of extinction. In this work, we aimed to determine if extreme fire severity defined as the 90th percentile of RdNBR has changed in Spain in the last 3 decades, if extreme fire severity pat...

Background Recent extreme wildfire events in countries with high investments in fire extinction indicate that strategies focusing exclusively on fire suppression are ineffective. Although upgrading analytical capacities and technological-based solutions in emergency management is needed, shifting from fire suppression to strategic fire management i...

Wildfire science needs new methods to evaluate and predict wildfire behavior and impacts. In this study, we present a new algorithm that calculates the maximum fire rate of spread resulting from a fire progression map made of isochrones, according to 1) the shape of the isochrones, and/or 2) prevailing atmospheric wind direction. We have applied th...

This project deliverable summaries the main findings and policy recommendations of the FirESmart project – Nature-based solutions for preventive fire management and sustained supply of ecosystem services. This research was funded by national funds through the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., under the FirESmart project (PCIF/MOG/0...

Increased large and high-intensity wildfires causes large socioeconomic and ecological impacts, which demands improved landscape management approaches where both ecological and societal dimensions are integrated. Engaging society in fire management requires a better understanding of stakeholders' perceptions of wildfires and landscape management. H...

El Pacto Verde Europeo aspira a convertir la Unión Europea en un territorio neutro de emisiones para 2050, así como proteger el capital natural de Europa para las personas y la salud. En este contexto, surge la necesidad de prevenir y prepararse para afrontar eventos de incendios extremos que están por venir en el territorio europeo. El proyecto FI...

Background ‘Megafire’ is an emerging concept commonly used to describe fires that are extreme in terms of size, behaviour, and/or impacts, but the term’s meaning remains ambiguous. Approach We sought to resolve ambiguity surrounding the meaning of ‘megafire’ by conducting a structured review of the use and definition of the term in several languag...

The usual approaches to describing and understanding ecological processes in a landscape use patch-mosaic models based on traditional landscape metrics. However, they do not consider that many of these processes cannot be observed without considering the multiple interactions between different land-use patches in the landscape. The objective of thi...

O período entre 2018 e 2022 mostrou-nos que o problema dos incêndios à escala global não está a diminuir, antes pelo contrário. Parece que as consequências das alterações climáticas já estão a afectar a ocorrência de incêndios florestais em várias partes do Mundo, de uma forma que só esperaríamos que acontecesse vários anos mais tarde. Em muitos pa...

How fuel influences fire spread at different spatial scales has been broadly studied but it is still under research. Although prior research has generally explored fuel effects at the stand scale, there is increasing recognition that forest structure and composition at the landscape scale can regulate fire size when weather conditions allow fire to...

text: Wildfires are one of the most common disturbances of terrestrial ecosystems at the global scale, but the increased frequency of extreme events is causing more social and ecological loses. The problem of wildfires in complex socioecological systems-where both social and ecological factors interact-requires the inclusion of the diversity of loc...

Climate regulation strategies based on forest restoration could pose an increase in fire risk, especially under drier and warmer conditions over large regions of Europe, impacting climate, the environment and human health. Climate-smarter options, such as wetlands restoration or recovery of grassland, that provide similar benefits for climate but a...

Extreme wildfire events in recent years are shaking our established knowledge of how fire regimes respond to climate variables and how societies need to react to fire impacts. Albeit fires are stochastic and extreme in nature, the speed, intensity, and extension of new extreme fires that have occurred during the last years are unprecedented. Here,...

Biodiversity faces many threats and these can interact to produce outcomes that may not be predicted by considering their effects in isolation. Habitat loss and fragmentation (hereafter 'fragmentation') and altered fire regimes are important threats to biodiversity, but their interactions have not been systematically evaluated across the globe. In...

Fire's growing impacts on ecosystems Fire has played a prominent role in the evolution of biodiversity and is a natural factor shaping many ecological communities. However, the incidence of fire has been exacerbated by human activity, and this is now affecting ecosystems and habitats that have never been fire prone or fire adapted. Kelly et al. rev...

Climate change projections over the Mediterranean basin point towards an increase in frequency and intensity of extreme events that will directly impact ecosystems resilience. In this study we evaluated future trends of soil loss in forestland in Catalonia (NE Spain) due to fires and vegetation dynamics, considering the potential future impacts of...

El MEDFIRE Val d’Aran és un model dissenyat per a reproduir el règim d’incendis (patrons espacio-temporals de foc) a la Val d’Aran (VA) basat en la relació dels incendis amb el clima i el paisatge (ignicions, vegetació, edat de la vegetació i gestió [cremes prescrites i extinció]). L’objectiu del model és poder analitzar les interaccions espacials...

Periodical outbreaks of Thaumetopoea pityocampa feeding on pine needles may pose a threat to Mediterranean coniferous forests by causing severe tree defoliation, growth reduction, and eventually mortality. To cost-effectively monitor the temporal and spatial damages in pine-oak mixed stands using unmanned aerial systems (UASs) for multispectral ima...

Understanding the interplay between climate, fuel and fire is necessary for developing strategies that minimize the negative impacts of fire on people and ecosystems. Here, we aim to investigate whether past fires limit fire activity by reducing fuel availability (‘fire leverage’) in Catalonia (NE Spain; 32,107 km²), a Mediterranean region encompas...

Making agricultural production compatible with the conservation of biological diversity is a priority in areas in which human-wildlife conflicts arise. The threatened Western Swamphen (Porphyrio porphyrio) feeds on rice, inducing crop damage and leading to decreases in rice production. Due to the Swamphen protection status, economic compensation po...

Landscape models are comprehensive tools that allow for an understanding of landscape dynamics and a means of deriving future projections in the context of global change. Vegetation and ecological processes such as growth, death or regeneration are essential components of forest landscape dynamics, but their inclusion in landscape-level modelling f...

Fire regimes are shifting or are expected to do so under global change. Current fire suppression is not able to control all wildfires, and its capability to do so might be compromised under harsher climate conditions. Alternative fire management strategies may allow to counteract predicted fire trends, but we lack quantitative tools to evaluate the...

Recent studies have explored the use of simple correlative models to project changes in future burnt areas (BAs) around the globe. However, estimates of future fire danger suffer from the critical shortcoming that feedbacks on climate change effects on vegetation are not explicitly included in purely correlative approaches causing potential major u...

Recent studies have applied simple correlative models to project an increase in future burnt area (BA) for the Mediterranean region. In one of these studies led by Marco Turco and co-workers in the journal Nature Communications (doi:10.1038/s41467-018-06358-z), the authors relate BA to regional estimates of cumulative drought surrogates derived fro...

Recent studies have applied simple correlative models to project an increase in future burnt area (BA) for the Mediterranean region. In one of these studies led by Marco Turco and co-workers in the journal Nature Communications (doi:10.1038/s41467-018-06358-z), the authors relate BA to regional estimates of cumulative drought surrogates derived fro...

Analysis of global change effects on fire regimes requires evaluations of key processes explaining fire activity at the appropriate spatial and temporal scales. Classifications of the weather conditions prevailing at large continental scales (called “Synoptic Weather Types”, SWT) offer convenient potential proxies for integrating weather-related fa...

p>Mapping fire severity is determinant to understand landscape evolution after a wildfire and provides useful information for decision making during post fire management. Quantitative fire severity mapping from relative changes in Normalized Burn Ratio index (RdNBR) is not actually being incorporated into decision making processes, being more usefu...

Los modelos de dinámicas del paisaje son herramientas especialmente adecuadas para 14 proyectar cambios en el paisaje forestal en un contexto de cambio global. En este trabajo se 15 propone el estudio empírico a gran escala de la dinámica de la vegetación integrada en un 16 modelo de dinámicas del paisaje. Se ha modelado el crecimiento en área basi...

La identificación de los posibles impactos futuros del cambio climático en los bosques y los servicios ecosistémicos asociados es útil para su planificación espacio-temporal. En este estudio hemos estimado y proyectado a corto-medio plazo la idoneidad climática y el crecimiento potencial (hipotética calidad de estación alta) de las principales espe...

Afforestation after land abandonment and the occurrence of large fires have significantly altered the composition of pine-oak ecosystems in the Mediterranean since 1950s, the latter favouring the prevalence of oak forests and shrublands to that of pine forests. Nevertheless, our ability to integrate the processes driving these changes in modelling...

Fire regimes are shifting worldwide because of global changes. The relative contribution of climate, topography and vegetation greatly determines spatial and temporal variations in fire regimes, but the interplay of these factors is not yet well understood. We introduce here a novel classification of fires according to dominant fire spread pattern,...

Decisions on landscape management are often dictated by government officials based on their own understandings of how landscape should be used and managed, but rarely considering local peoples’ understandings of the landscape they inhabit. We use data collected through free listings, field transects and interviews to describe how an Amazonian group...

En aquesta tesis es presenten els resultats de la investigació duta a terme a les comunitats indígenes Tsimane’ de l’Amazònia boliviana. La investigació estudia la percepció dels indígenes sobre l’etnoclassificació del seu territori. S’estableix una clau de classificació i es determina la importància dels elements paisatgístics del territori Tsiman...