Rut Domènech

• Biologist and PhD Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
• University of California, Davis

Peatland ecosystems are of global conservation and environmental importance storing globally significant amounts of ancient carbon, regulating regional temperatures and hydrological regimes, and supporting unique biodiversity. Livestock grazing, land-use change, drainage, nutrient and acid deposition, and wildfire threaten the composition and funct...

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...

The future status of peatlands as carbon stores/sinks is uncertain given current and predicted environmental change. Several factors can affect the magnitude of the peatland carbon sink including disturbances such as wildfire. There is at present little evidence of how wildfire affects the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) via pert...

This work was funded by the European Union as part of the Project “The Amur Coalition for Participatory Governance”. Contract No 2015/370-518, aimed at enabling participatory forest governance and civil society development in the Russian Far East. The Project was delivered by the Amur Branch WWF (Russia) and the Forest Sciences and Technology Centr...

Forest beekeeping is an example par excellence of sustainable local enterprises. IT creates strong incentives to protect forest ecosystems while providing local communities the sources of income and livelihood. In the context of Primorsky province, the southern corner of the Russian Far East, forest beekeepers have been actively managing bees under...

El fuego como componente del sistema de los bosques de pino laricio. Experiencia acumulada en el uso de las quemas prescritas para la conservación de los bosques de pino laricio. Integración del fuego en la conservación del hábitat. Disponible en español, catalán e inglés.

Thinning is recommended in overstocked thickets to improve forest structure and reduce high-intensity stand replacing fires. Many studies have outlined the benefits of thinning for forest growth and reproduction but effectiveness in fire intensity needs more attention. Moreover, the effect that slash generated by thinning may have on fire behavior...

Fuel treatments can mitigate present and future impacts of climate change by reducing fire intensity and severity. In recent years, Pinus nigra forests in the Mediterranean basin have been dramatically affected by the new risk of highly intense and extreme fires and its distribution area has been reduced. New tools are necessary for assessing the m...

Los bosques de pino laricio de Cataluña son un hábitat prioritario en Europa. Éstos han sido gestionados tradicionalmente por entresaca y hoy en día presentan, en general, estructuras forestales con una elevada continuidad vertical de vegetación y acumulación de combustible en el sotobosque, estructuras muy vulnerables a generar fuegos de copas de...

Temperate peatland wildfires are of significant environmental concern but information on their environmental effects is lacking. We assessed variation in burn severity and fuel consumption within and between wildfires that burnt British moorlands in 2011 and 2012. We adapted the Composite Burn Index (pCBI) to provide semi-quantitative estimates of...

Globally peatlands contain ca. 550 GT of ancient carbon and there is the potential for a positive feedback between peatland degradation and global climate change. Peatlands cover a substantial area of the British Uplands and the effects of wildfire and traditional managed burning on their ecological integrity are issues of growing debate. Land-mana...

This work in progress presentation wants to summarize the work done in flame modeling applied so far to forest fires and to present the on-going efforts at empirical and physical level that CERTEC is devoting to reach in a near future the goals set in this subject. We are distinguishing here two different approaches depending on whether flame model...

Les muntanyes de Tivissa i Vandellòs són muntanyes feréstegues, dures, aspres i desconegudes, tocades per un vent insistent que les recorre i refresca des de la vall de l'Ebre fins al mar. Desnivells tècnics, graus, miloques, vent, argelagues, obagues boscoses, espenegalls, fous, carenes interminables, barrancades profundes fins al riu o el mar, to...

We performed a stream fertilisation experiment in an oligotrophic, forested, undisturbed stream by increasing nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations. The effect of nutrient loading on microfauna was studied over 6months. A before after control impact (BACI) design was used to determine the outcome of the addition by comparing three upstream non-enr...

RESUM Durant els darrers anys els incendis forestals han devastat greument Catalunya, ocasionant danys a nivell humà i al medi ambient, amb importants conseqüències econòmiques i socials. La tendència creixent en el nombre d'incendis ocorreguts es veu afavorida pel canvi climàtic, degut al qual es preveu que augmenti el risc d'incendi, ja que els p...

L’objectiu d’aquest document és recopilar els resultats del treball realitzat en el Bloc 3 “Propietats intrínseques” del projecte IRVA. Aquests resultats han de servir juntament amb d’altres paràmetres característics de les zones d’estudi (propietats extrínseques, característiques topogràfiques i condicions meteorològiques) com a dades d’entrada pe...

L’objectiu principal del projecte IRVA és conèixer les característiques del incendis que poden ocórrer en zones forestals on s’han realitzat treballs d’aclarida de regenerat de pi blanc i on les restes vegetals que s’han generat no s’han retirat de la zona. Per tal d’assolir aquest objectiu és necessari conèixer les característiques del combustible...