REWILDFIRE - Simulation of rewilding scenarios and wildfire regimes in temperate forests
Abstract
Temperate forest landscapes in the Alpine region face significant ecological and socio-economic challenges due to changing land-use practices and climate. In the last decades pastures and agricultural activities have been abandoned, leading to unplanned afforestation processes on previously managed unforested areas which might increase the flammability at the landscape scale. Additionally, drought and heat waves stand out due to their increasing frequency and intensity in the Alpine space, making fire disturbance more unpredictable and severe under climate change. These combined processes pose a direct threat to local communities’ livelihood and safety, while having dramatic impacts on the functioning of temperate forest ecosystems of the Alps. The REWILD-FIRE project investigates the trade-offs between potential benefits of temperate forest growth as encouraged by rewilding policies for climate change mitigation versus the impacts of increased wildfire hazard due to fuel load accumulation on carbon emissions under two climate change scenarios. The REMAINS R-package, a model to simulate land use changes, forest aging and wildfire processes, has been adapted and parametrized in 8 landscapes (50 km2 each) across four alpine geographic bioregions. The results allow to quantify the land cover transitions towards forested areas as well as carbon loss and emissions due to wildfires across different rewilding scenarios (Business as usual, Fire control policies, Fire-Smart rewilding), assessing carbon trajectories and overall carbon budget across 30-year simulations.
Davide Ascoli
Associate professor, Chair of Fire Management, Chair of Forest Measurements
My research interests include forest ecology and disturbances with particular attention to wildfires in Alpine, Temperate and Mediterranean ecosystems.
Gian Luca Spadoni
PhD candidate in Sustainable Development and Climate Change
Jose Moris
Postdoctoral researcher
Rachele Gamba
Research assistant
Giorgio Vacchiano
Associate professor in forest management and planning
My research interests include modeling the effect of natural disturbances on ecosystem response as well as modeling future forest ecosystem services.
Sophia Djacenko
Research assistant
Lorenzo Rossi
Research assistant
Giorgio Alberti
Associate professor in Silviculture and Forest Management
My research interests include ecological issues concerning carbon and nitrogen cycles in agricultural and forestry ecosystems.
Antonio Tomao
Assistant professor
