Nuria Prat-Guitart

• PhD
• Pau Costa Foundation

Altered fire regimes are a global challenge, increasingly exacerbated by climate change, which modifies fire weather and prolongs fire seasons. These changing conditions heighten the vulnerability of ecosystems and human populations to the impacts of wildfires on the environment, society, and the economy. The rapid pace of these changes exposes sig...

Living with wildfires in an era of climate change requires adaptation and weaving together many forms of knowledge. Empirical evidence of knowledge co-production in wildfire management is lacking in Mediterranean European areas. We explored how local ecological knowledge can be leveraged to reduce wildfire risk through an adaptation pathways proces...

Background Rural and semi-rural areas are complex and dynamic social-ecological systems, many of which have experienced profound impacts from wildland fires, particularly this decade. Under uncertain climate change conditions, these areas require new adaptive strategies to support landscape and community resilience. While these areas vary widely, s...

The report starts with an exploration of the challenges of Wildfire Risk Communication, particularly within the context of increasingly extreme wildfires. To overcome such challenges, we propose moving beyond just focusing on reducing and mitigating risk, into the broader arena of Wildfire Communication. As this report aims to promote more inclusiv...

Nowadays, extensive livestock farming faces substantial threats in the Mediterranean region , provoking a setback dynamic in the sector. In 2016, the Fire Flocks (FF) project was conceived and implemented as a regional strategy to revert this situation and revalue the sector in Catalonia, in the NE of the Iberian Peninsula. FF promotes forest manag...

This study was conducted following the fires that took place in Rocallaura (Spain) between 23/06/2016 and 19/07/2017. The aim is to analyse the importance of soil on forest planning and management mechanisms to mitigate the impacts of forest fire re-ignitions on risk and management framework. The main factors found to influence the occurrence of re...

Extensive livestock grazing has proved to be a valuable tool to reduce wildfire risk in Mediterranean landscapes. Meat from herds providing wildfire prevention services exhibit sustainability traits that can appeal to ethical consumers and find a suitable niche in local markets. This study assesses the preferences of a consumer sample in the provin...

Changes in climate, land use, and land management impact the occurrence and severity of wildland fires in many parts of the world. This is particularly evident in Europe, where ongoing changes in land use have strongly modified fire patterns over the last decades. Although satellite data by the European Forest Fire Information System provide large-...

The present study was conducted following a fire that took place in Rocallaura (NE Iberian Peninsula) in 23 June 2016 with the aim of analyzing the chemical properties of soil in burnt and unburnt areas in order to determine the short-term effects of fire on an ecosystem dominated by Pinus halepensis Mill. Transects were laid out in a control area...

This study analyses the smouldering combustion on soils that took place during the wildfires that occurred in Rocallaura (Northeastern Spain). The smouldering combustion after the first event, 23 June, was the potential source of flaming fire re-ignition of the second event, 19 July 2016. Re-ignitions are an important challenge for the firefighting...

The current operating model based only on the approach of fire suppression has generated what experts call the "fire-paradox": the control of all wildfires in the seasons with mild weather generates a fuel load which increases the probability of catastrophic wildfires in the years with extreme climate. Even though the fire has been present on earth...

In recent years, fire services in Mediterranean Europe have been overwhelmed by extreme wildfire behavior. As a consequence, fire management has moved to defensive strategies with a focus only on the known risks (the fear trap). In this region, wildfires can change rapidly, increasing the uncertainty and causing complex operational scenarios that i...

Challenges and opportunities to improve emergency management. Emergency services often collect data about the emergency events in order to compile useful information that help improve the emergency deployment: post-events analyses, research, extract lessons learnt, etc. Nowadays, there are not standardised methods to collect data and information ab...

Volume 5 contains 20 chapters devoted to advances in field and laboratory research about coal and peat fires. Additional material about these fires is available on the companion website for this book at https://www.elsevier.com/books/coal-and-peat-fires-a-global-perspective/stracher/978-0-12-849885-9. Chapter 1 discusses the earliest known uses of...

Natural and man-made disaster, whose impact has been increasing on the last years, present a series of common dynamics which can be exploited for a more efficient emergency management. Current disaster management systems focus on single types of emergencies and cannot be flexibly adapted to the respective situation. The presented approach developed...

The gravimetric moisture content of peat is the main factor limiting the ignition and spread propagation of smouldering fires. Our aim is to use controlled laboratory experiments to better understand how the spread of smouldering fires is influenced in natural landscape conditions where the moisture content of the top peat layer is not homogeneous....

The consumption of large areas of peat during wildfires is due to self-sustained smouldering fronts that can remain active for weeks. We studied the effect of peat moisture content and bulk density on the horizontal propagation of smouldering fire in laboratory-scale experiments. We used milled peat with moisture contents between 25 and 250% (mass...

Smoldering fires in peatlands can consume large areas of peat and release important amounts of carbon to the atmosphere as they self-propagate. This chapter focuses on the use of infrared images to characterize the horizontal propagation of smoldering fires in laboratory experiments. In these laboratory experiments an infrared camera takes images o...

In shallow layers of peat, the transition between moss species causes a step-change of the horizontal distribution of peat moisture content. Post-fire studies in peatlands have reported shallow layers being consumed in irregular distributions. The unburned areas were found to be patches of wet Sphagnum moss. Our laboratory scale study analyses the...

Keywords Abstract Moisture content Peat Peatland fire Propagation Smouldering Smouldering is a slow, flameless form of combustion which greatly affects peatland and soil layers with high organic matter content. Once these organic rich layers begin smouldering they can burn for months, be difficult to extinguish, consume large quantities of material...

Smouldering is a slow, flameless form of combustion affecting soil layers with high organic matter content (e.g. peat, humus, duff). Smouldering fires are difficult to extinguish and can spread through soil layers for weeks and months. Such fires remove large quantities of soil, damage root systems and soil biota, cause habitat loss and release sub...

This article presents the direct and indirect effects of fire caused by a wildfire in organic peat soil in a Scottish example of Rothiemurchus forest during the summer of 2006. The results have been an alteration of soil properties due to the burning of accumulated organic matter that formed the base of the soil. After a year and a half since the f...