José María Fernández-Alonso

Xunta de Galicia · Centro de Investigación Forestal Lourizán

The characterization of aboveground biomass is important in forest management planning, with various objectives ranging from prevention of forest fires to restoration of burned areas, especially in fire-prone regions such as NW Spain. Although remotely sensed data have often been used to assess the recovery of standing aboveground biomass after per...

In this study, 310 destructively sampled plots were used to develop two equation systems for the three main pine species in NW Spain (P. pinaster; P. radiata and P. sylvestris): one for estimating loads of understorey fuel components by size and condition (live and dead) and another one for forest floor fuels. Additive systems of equations were sim...

Shrub-dominated ecosystems cover large areas globally and play essential roles in ecological processes. Aboveground biomass expressed on an area basis (AGB) is central to many of the ecological processes and services provided by shrublands and is important as the main fuel source for wildfires. Hence, its accurate estimation in shrublands is crucia...

Field guide for soil burn severity assessment

Background Forest fires have increased in extent and intensity in the Mediterranean area in recent years, threatening forest ecosystems through loss of vegetation, changes in soil properties, and increased soil erosion rates, particularly in severely burned areas. However, establishing the relationships between burn severity and soil properties tha...

Forest spatial structure describes the relationships among different species in the same forest community. Automation in the monitoring of the structural forest changes and forest mapping is one of the main utilities of applications of modern geoinformatics methods. The obtaining objective information requires the use of spatial data derived from p...

A methodology to estimate the extent of areas affected by forest fires, as well as the burn severity levels using Sentinel 2 images (10 and 20 m) is proposed and applied to the fires occurred in October 2017 in Spain and Portugal. An extension larger than 250,000 ha and 4 burn severity levels (low, moderate, high and very high) have been obtained....

The optimization of forest management in roadsides is a necessary task in terms of wildfire prevention in order to mitigate their effects. Forest fire risk assessment identifies high-risk locations, while providing a decision-making support about vegetation management for firefighting. In this study, nine relevant parameters: elevation, slope, aspe...

Soil erosion can potentially threaten different resources inside and outside of burned areas, and the risk of water becoming contaminated with sediment may be particularly severe. Various post‐fire actions, such as applying straw mulch, have been carried out in NW Spain in recent years with the aim of mitigating the risk of soil erosion. Nonetheles...

La determinación rápida del efecto del fuego sobre un territorio determina el éxito de las tareas de estabiliza-ción, que son realizadas en un contexto de urgencia y medios limitados. Los diagnósticos de severidad del fuego sobre una zona se apoyan en información remota con la elaboración de distintos índices espectrales. A pesar del innegable avan...

Mastication is commonly used as a fuel reduction treatment to minimize severe wildfires in fire-prone areas worldwide. Although mastication of non-commercial burned trees has become common practice in NW Spain in recent years, little is known about the possible effects on fuels, soil physical properties and vegetation recovery. In this study, sites...

Forest fires in Galicia have become a serious environmental problem over the years. This is especially the case in the Pontevedra region, where in October 2017 large fires (>500 hectares) burned more than 15,000 Ha. In addition to the area burned being of relevance, it is also very important to know quickly and accurately the different severity deg...

Plurifor: a transnational management of forest fire Fires are a major hazard observed in the forests in southwestern Europe. In 2017, approximately 540,630 hectares of forest were burned in Portugal, 178,234 ha in Spain and 26,378 in France. Furthermore, forest fire occurrence and severity tend to increase with climate change and human activities....

El proyecto que se presenta aborda una problemática de especial interés científico-tecnológico, ecológico y socio-económico relativa a los incendios forestales. Científico-tecnológico, por la escasez de información aplicable y fiable sobre el comportamiento del fuego de copa y por el estado incipiente de desarrollo de los modelos predictivos de com...

Post-fire soil erosion is of major concern because of the effects it has on both soil and water resources. Rapid assessment of post-fire soil burn severity is essential for planning mitigation actions aimed at reducing post-fire flood and erosion risk. Soil burn severity is spatially heterogeneous and mainly depends on the type of vegetation, topog...

En un escenario de cambio climático, en el cual se esperan incendios de mayor intensidad y temporadas más largas, tratar los combustibles forestales supone la única alternativa para mitigar el impacto del fuego. Combinar trabajos selvícolas y triturado de restos es una de las opciones más empleada para aumentar la resistencia de las masas arboladas...

Assessing biomass is critical for accounting bioenergy potentials and monitoring forest ecosystem responses to global change and disturbances. Remote sensing, especially Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data combined with field data, is being increasingly used for forest inventory purposes. We evaluated the feasibility of the combined use of fre...

Fire is a major disturbance in forests and one of the most important carbon emissions sources, which contributes to climate change. Carbon emissions are directly correlated with the degree of organic matter consumption or fire severity. Gaining knowledge about the relative strength of the various explanatory variables is essential to mitigate its e...

Effective silvicultural strategies for reducing the likelihood and severity of crown fires include increasing canopy base height (CBH) and reducing canopy bulk density (CBD). These variables depend to a certain degree on stand structure and are therefore responsive to stand density management through thinning. In this study, data from permanent sam...

Wildfires have become a main forestry concern for pine stands in Galicia (NW Spain). Burned forested areas have patterns of varying burn severity as a consequence of various topographic, vegetation and meteorological factors. Determining the relative importance of these factors is necessary to predict fire severity on the canopy, and therefore, bas...

Las plantaciones de coníferas están entre los tipos de vegetación más inflamables. Para estimar el riesgo de inicio de fuego y propagación en el estrato arbóreo, es necesario disponer de métodos que permitan obtener las características del combustible de copas. Este estudio calcula, a partir de datos del 4º Inventario Forestal Nacional, la cantidad...

Una estimación precisa de la carga de combustible del dosel consumida durante fuegos de copa activos es crítica para mejorar nuestro conocimiento del comportamiento del fuego de copa y para una cuantificación más precisa de las emisiones de los gases que se producen durante estos incendios. La información sobre consunciones en incendios reales es m...

Crown fire occurrence and subsequent crown fire behaviour are strongly dependent on canopy fuel characteristics, especially canopy fuel load (CFL), canopy bulk density (CBD) and canopy base height (CBH). Therefore, quantification of such variables is required for the appropriate selection of silvicultural treatments aimed at reducing susceptibility...

Adequate quantification of canopy fuel load and canopy bulk density is required for assessment of the susceptibility of forest stands to crown fire and evaluation of silvicultural treatments aimed at reducing the risk of crowning. The use of tree biomass equations and vertical profile distributions of crown fuels provide the most accurate estimates...