Leonor Calvo

University of Leon | UNILEON · Department of Biodiversity and Environment Management

Context The invasion of annual grasses in western U.S. rangelands promotes high litter accumulation throughout the landscape that perpetuates a grass-fire cycle threatening biodiversity. Objectives To provide novel evidence on the potential of fine spatial and structural resolution remote sensing data derived from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) t...

We propose a novel mono-temporal framework with a physical basis and ecological consistency to retrieve fire severity at very high spatial resolution. First, we sampled the Composite Burn Index (CBI) in 108 field plots that were subsequently surveyed through unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flights. Then, we mimicked the field methodology for CBI asse...

Los incendios forestales pueden tener un gran impacto sobre los ecosistemas. Uno de los impactos más visibles es la pérdida de cobertura vegetal, dejando desprotegido al suelo frente a la erosión. Además, el incremento de la temperatura como consecuencia del fuego afectará sus propiedades físicas, químicas y biológicas. Estos cambios están relacion...

La Península Ibérica es uno de los límites más amplios entre la vegetación Mediterránea y Eurosiberiana donde coexisten comunidades vegetales de ambas regiones, formando una de las áreas de vegetación más diversas del planeta, las zonas Sub-Mediterráneas. En ellas se pueden diferenciar comunidades vegetales dominadas mayoritariamente por especies M...

Los incendios forestales son uno de los principales elementos de perturbación de los ecosistemas, sin embargo, el impacto que producen puede depender en gran medida de los atributos del régimen de fuego. En las últimas décadas, los regímenes de fuego están cambiando hacia incendios más extensos y severos que pueden comprometer la resiliencia del ec...

The post-fire resilience of vegetation is critical from both ecological and management perspectives. Predicting post-fire vegetation cover is therefore essential for helping land managers in decision-making processes. Post-fire recovery depends on various factors, including the fire regime attributes, climate, topography and also biological factors...

Background Designing effective land management actions addressed to increase ecosystem resilience requires us to understand how shifting fire regimes are shaping landscapes. In this study, we aim to assess the link between fire regime and pre-fire vegetation biophysical characteristics (type, amount, and structure) in controlling extreme fire behav...

Background Fire behaviour assessments of past wildfire events have major implications for anticipating post-fire ecosystem responses and fuel treatments to mitigate extreme fire behaviour of subsequent wildfires. Aims This study evaluates for the first time the potential of remote sensing techniques to provide explicit estimates of fire type (surf...

Fire has played a crucial role in shaping Earth's landscapes for millions of years and has been used as a cultural tool for human development for millennia. However, changing fire regimes driven by global change drivers and human influences are reshaping landscapes and leading to more severe wildfires, with significant socioeconomic and environment...

En la Península Ibérica se dan cambios graduales entre la vegetación Mediterránea y Eurosiberiana, encontrando áreas de ecotono donde conviven comunidades vegetales de ambas regiones, conocidas como zonas Sub-Mediterráneas. En general, estas zonas de ecotono se caracterizan por albergar una gran diversidad y representan áreas prioritarias desde el...

La educación superior necesita adaptarse constantemente a un entorno cambiante y dinámico que demanda una constante evolución en la forma de entender el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje, y es en este contexto que surge la innovación docente como un elemento clave para asegurar la calidad y el progreso de la educación superior y, por lo tanto, el éx...

Background Fire-vegetation feedbacks can modulate the global change effects conducive to extreme fire behavior and high fire severity of subsequent wildfires in reburn areas by altering the composition, flammability traits, and spatial arrangement of fuels. Repeated, high-severity wildfires at short return intervals may trigger long-term vegetation...

The objective of this work is to analyse the impact of wildfires on soil microbial communities and their functionality through metataxonomic analysis and functionality databases (Faprotax and Funguild). One year after the wildfire (summer 2022) that occurred in Navalacruz (Central Spain) plots of 1x1 m were established: 14 burnt plots and 5 non-bur...

Fire activity has significant implications for ecological communities, biogeochemical cycles, climate, and human lives and assets [...]

Wildfires alter the structure and functioning of ecosystems through changes in their biotic and abiotic components. A deeper understanding recovery process concerning diverse communities and properties within these components can provide valuable insights into the ecological effects of wildfires. Therefore, it is appropriate to enhance our understa...

Post-fire management treatments, such as mulching and tree logging debris, are employed to mitigate soil degradation and enhance vegetation and soil recovery. These treatments create new conditions in the soil where they are applied, resulting in changes in solar radiation and the introduction of organic matter from straw or wood. Consequently, the...

This study represents a first attempt to shed light into the mechanisms that modulate the response of ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF) to fire severity in post-fire landscapes. We specifically investigated the role played by fire-induced changes on above and belowground communities in the modulation of EMF responses at short-term after fire. For...

The impact of wildfires on soil microbiota and their post-fire development over time are highly dynamic with regard to community composition and microbial functionality. In this study, fungal and bacterial groups were analyzed for nine months after the Navalacruz wildfire in a Pinus sylvestris area in Spain...

Due to complex interactions between climate and land use changes, large forest fires have increased in frequency and severity over the last decades, impacting dramatically on biodiversity and society. In southern European countries affected by demographic challenges, fire risk and danger play special relevance at the wildland-urban interfaces (WUIs...

Background Mediterranean ecosystems dominated by Pinus pinaster Ait. (maritime pine) are subject to a shift from fuel-limited to drought-driven fire regimes, characterized by an increasing wildfire extent, recurrence, and severity. Previous studies have not addressed the interacting effects of fire recurrence and severity on the ecosystem multifunc...

In Southern Europe, the abandonment of the traditional transhumant system where sheep graze lowland areas during winter and distant mountain systems during summer has led to an important cultural loss and still poorly understood ecological consequences. We investigate the landscape-scale implications of contemporary sheep grazing patterns in a Glob...

Fire danger analysis is crucial for landscape planning, which is particularly relevant in vulnerable areas such as the wildland-urban interface (WUI). The aim of our work is to investigate the capacity of fuel characteristics to predict burn severity in different WUI typologies classified according to nearby building density criteria. To achieve th...

The evaluation at detailed spatial scale of soil status after severe fires may provide useful information on the recovery of burned forest ecosystems. Here, we aimed to assess the potential of combining multispectral imagery at different spectral and spatial resolutions to estimate soil indicators of burn severity. The study was conducted in a burn...

Calluna vulgaris-dominated heathlands are a priority habitat type in Annex I of the Habitats Directive (92/43/ECC, habitat code 4060). In the Iberian Peninsula, the landscape of the Cantabrian Mountain range has great heterogeneity due to human management during the last 10,000 years. Another factor that can affect these communities is the increase...

Background Burn severity plays an important role in shaping vegetation recovery in Mediterranean ecosystems. In the present study, we aimed to evaluate the influence of burn severity on short-term vegetation resilience in different ecosystems. We selected the Cabrera wildfire (northwest Iberian Peninsula), which affected shrubland, heathland, broom...

Overexploitation, land-use change, and climate warming are compromising the conservation of many plant species across the globe, as well as the benefits they provide to people. The yellow gentian (Gentiana lutea L.) is a hemicryptophyte used for pharmacological and food industries harvested in the mountain systems of Southern Europe, which may be s...

Background Mulching and burnt wood treatments are commonly applied to prevent the loss of soil quality and erosion, but their effect on soil multifunctionality remains unexplored. Aims We filled this gap by assessing the medium-term (4 years) effects of these treatments on soil multifunctionality after a large wildfire in NW Spain. Methods Straw mu...

La disminución de ganado ovino trashumante acaecido durante las últimas décadas puede tener consecuencias significativas en las clases de cubiertas del suelo y en la diversidad de estas en las zonas de montaña. Se investigó la influencia del pastoreo en la evolución del paisaje en puertos de merinas de la Cordillera Cantábrica (2002-2020). Para ell...

Exotic annual grasses invasion across northern Great Basin rangelands has promoted a grass-fire cycle that threatens the sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) steppe ecosystem. In this sense, high accumulation rates and persistence of litter from annual species largely increase the amount and continuity of fine fuels. Here, we highlight the potential use and...

We aimed to compare the potential of physical-based models (radiative transfer and pixel unmixing models) for evaluating the short-term resilience to fire of several shrubland communities as a function of their regenerative strategy and burn severity. The study site was located within the perimeter of a wildfire that occurred in summer 2017 in the...

Abstract The structural complexity of plant communities contributes to maintaining the ecosystem functioning in fire‐prone landscapes and plays a crucial role in driving ecological resilience to fire. The objective of this study was to evaluate the resilience to fire off several plant communities with reference to the temporal evolution of their ve...

Livestock grazing abandonment entails important shifts on the overall ecosystem function, but the effects of this land-use change on specific bacterial taxa remain poorly understood in mountain grasslands. Moreover, we currently lack knowledge about the feedbacks between changes in ecosystem functions affected by livestock abandonment in mountain g...

Severe wildfires cause important changes in vegetation and soil properties in Mediterranean ecosystems. The aim of this work was to evaluate ecosystem multifunctionality through the study of burn severity short-term effects on different ecosystem functions and services. We selected the Cabrera wildfire (2017) in northwest Spain. Burn severity was q...

Los incendios forestales ocasionan importantes alteraciones sobre los suelos, por lo que las acciones de protección post-incendio son fundamentales tanto para evitar la degradación del suelo como para protegerlo de la erosión y, por tanto, mantener su capacidad de producción de servicios. El objetivo de este estudio fue evaluar el efecto a corto pl...

Los incendios forestales ocasionan importantes alteraciones sobre los suelos, por lo que las acciones de protección post-incendio son fundamentales tanto para evitar la degradación del suelo como para protegerlo de la erosión y, por tanto, mantener su capacidad de producción de servicios. El objetivo de este estudio fue evaluar el efecto a corto pl...

Los pinares de Pinus pinaster de La Sierra del Teleno se han visto históricamente afectados por numerosos incendios de escasa extensión. Sin embargo, en los últimos años se ha incrementado la recurrencia y se han producido dos grandes incendios (en 1998 y 2012), probablemente consecuencia del cambio en las condiciones climáticas y en la gestión del...

El objetivo de este estudio fue evaluar la resiliencia ingenieril a corto plazo de diversas comunidades de matorral en función de su estrategia regenerativa y la severidad del fuego, dentro del perímetro de un mega-incendio ocurrido en verano de 2017 en el noroeste de la Península Ibérica. Se dispuso de una serie temporal de imágenes de satélite Se...

Remote sensing techniques are of particular interest for monitoring wildfire effects on soil properties, which may be highly context-dependent in large and heterogeneous burned landscapes. Despite the physical sense of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) backscatter data for characterizing soil spatial variability in burned areas, this approach remains...

Understanding the effects of traditional livestock grazing abandonment on the ability of mountain grasslands to sustain multiple ecosystem functions (ecosystem multifunctionality; EMF) is crucial for implementing policies that promote grasslands conservation and the delivery of multiple ecosystem services. In this study, we evaluated the effect of...

In burned landscapes, the recruitment success of the tree dominant species mainly depends on plant competition mechanisms operating at fine spatial scale, that may hinder resource availability during the former years after the disturbance. Data acquisition at very high spatial resolution from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have promoted new opportu...

Background The characterization of surface and canopy fuel loadings in fire-prone pine ecosystems is critical for understanding fire behavior and anticipating the most harmful ecological effects of fire. Nevertheless, the joint consideration of both overstory and understory strata in burn severity assessments is often dismissed. The aim of this wor...

The large environmental and socioeconomic impacts of wildfires in Southern Europe require the development of efficient generalizable tools for fire danger analysis and proactive environmental management. With this premise, we aimed to study the influence of different environmental variables on burn severity, as well as to develop accurate and gener...

The degree to which burn severity influences the recovery of aboveground carbon density (ACD) of live pools in shrublands remains unclear. Multitemporal LiDAR data was used to evaluate ACD recovery three years after fire in shrubland ecosystems as a function of burn severity immediately after fire across an environmental and productivity gradient i...

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...

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...

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...

En los últimos años, los incendios forestales se han convertido en un grave riesgo para la conservación de los ecosistemas debido a las modificaciones en el régimen de los mismos, que están condicionadas por el cambio climático y el cambio en los usos del suelo. En el contexto de cambio global actual, el fuego en la cuenca mediterránea -y en partic...

The evaluation of soil burn severity at fine scale is one of the main challenges in fire ecology. The innovative technology of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) provides highly detailed spatial information that could be used to characterize accurately different attributes of burned areas. The main purpose of this study was to assess the ability of ver...

Communities of bacteria present in soil play a critical role in regulating biogeochemical cycles of soil. They are fundamental in ecosystem recovery after any type of disturbance, included wildfires. These communities have traditionally been evaluated by indirect measures, such as carbon or microbial enzyme activities. However, at present the metag...

Resilience is a key concept in the study of the recovery of ecosystems affected by disturbances. Currently, there are numerous indices to measure resilience, but many of them do not show the accuracy of the resilience value or the behaviour of ecological parameters in the face of disturbances. New approaches and technologies enable large amounts of...

Fire is an important ecological element in the Mediterranean Basin. However, increases in fire frequency, burned area and burn severity may have relevant implications for these ecosystems. In fact, burn severity is one of the most significant factors affecting plant communities, since it has important effects on post-fire vegetation recovery. In ad...

Los incendios forestales son perturbaciones muy frecuentes en la Cuenca Mediterránea, los cuales han actuado a lo largo del tiempo como importantes agentes ecológicos. Esto ha influido en la capacidad de regeneración de muchas especies y, de este modo, en la resiliencia de los ecosistemas Mediterráneos. Sin embargo, el régimen actual de incendios e...

Current predictions of global change effects in the Mediterranean Basin include an increase in the number, severity and recurrence of wildfires that will affect post-fire recovery of forest ecosystems, altering the provision of public goods and services on which many local populations depend. Mediterranean pine forests have been greatly affected by...

In Mediterranean forest ecosystems affected by wildfires, the degree of soil damage is a critical factor controlling post-fire regeneration. The soil compartment shows a huge diversity in its environmental characteristics, therefore the effects of burn severity at local scales are extremely heterogeneous and complex. A rapidly knowing about fire im...

Alterations generated by intensified wildfire regimes are leading to unprecedented impacts in the supply of ecosystem services (ES). We investigated how a large wildfire affected the components of ES delivery (capacity, flow, and demand) in a fire-prone landscape. We selected a set of socio-ecologically and economically important provisioning ES an...

Fire effects on soil, in the medium and long term, are linked to the resilience of biological communities. The study of the resilience of the bacterial community, through the analysis of the OTUs (Operational taxonomic units, similar to species in bacterial communities) and the main taxonomic groups (MTG), helps to understand the underlying process...

Soils play a key role regulating the global carbon cycle being the most important sink in terrestrial ecosystems. Nowadays, soils store around 680,000 million tons of carbon, mainly as organic form. However, disturbances such as wildfires release large quantities into the atmosphere, decrease soil C stocks in the forest floor layer and produce a va...

Non‐forest ecosystems, dominated by shrubs, grasses and herbaceous plants, provide ecosystem services including carbon sequestration and forage for grazing, and are highly sensitive to climatic changes. Yet these ecosystems are poorly represented in remotely sensed biomass products and are undersampled by in situ monitoring. Current global change t...

The design and implementation of pre-fire management strategies in heterogeneous landscapes requires the identification of the ecological conditions contributing to the most adverse effects of wildfires. This study evaluates which features of pre-fire vegetation structure, estimated through broadband land surface albedo and Light Detection and Rang...

Forest managers demand reliable and cost-efficient methodologies to implement forest resilience concepts in post-fire decision-making at different spatio-temporal scales. In this paper, we developed a generalizable remote sensing-based tool to measure disturbance impact and engineering resilience at short-term in forest ecosystems affected by wildl...

La aplicación de mulch de paja para evitar la erosión es una técnica habitual en la gestión post fuego en grandes incendios. Mientras que los efectos sobre la cobertura vegetal y la erosión están ampliamente estudiados, el efecto sobre las comunidades bacterianas todavía se desconoce en gran medida. En este estudio se muestra cómo esta técnica prov...

La evaluación del efecto de la severidad en los suelos forestales es esencial para determinar el impacto de los incendios forestales. El principal objetivo de este estudio fue evaluar la potencialidad de imágenes obtenidas por vehículos aéreos no tripulados (UAV) de muy alta resolución para identificar indicadores visuales de severidad capaces de r...

El impacto causado por el fuego sobre los ecosistemas obliga a implementar medidas de restauración con el fin de recuperar su valor natural. En el presente estudio se evaluó el efecto de la restauración con mulch de paja sobre una serie de indicadores biológicos de calidad del suelo como el carbono de la biomasa microbiana y las actividades enzimát...

El impacto causado por el fuego sobre los ecosistemas obliga a implementar medidas de restauración con el fin de recuperar su valor natural. En el presente estudio se evaluó el efecto de la restauración con mulch de paja sobre una serie de indicadores biológicos de calidad del suelo como el carbono de la biomasa microbiana y las actividades enzimá...