Post-Fire Management and Restoration of Southern European Forests [Paperback]

In spite of all the efforts made in fire prevention and suppression, every year about 45 000 forest fires occur in Europe, burning ca. 0.5 million hectares of forests and other rural lands. The management of these burned forests has been given much less attention than fire prevention or fire suppression issues, but the post-fire management of burned areas raises strong concerns (economic and social impacts, soil erosion and water quality, biodiversity loss, forest restoration). Although there are a few publications which address post-fire management, the focus of these has been either on general approaches to restoration or specific topics such as preventing post-fire soil erosion. This book is about the post-fire management of fire-prone forest types in southern Europe. It provides the first comprehensive overview of the topic, ranging from stand-level to landscape-level management, and from emergency actions to long-term restoration approaches.

The 45000 annual forest fires in Europe lay waste to 0.5m hectares of forests and other rural lands. This book addresses the vital issue of post-fire management of burned areas, a subject beset by serious environmental, economic and social issues.

1. Setting the Scene for Post-Fire Management. Francisco Moreira, Margarita Arianoutsou, V. Ram?n Vallejo, Jorge de las Heras, Piermaria Corona, Gavriil Xanthopoulos, Paulo Fernandes, and Kostas Papageorgiou.- 2. Land Cover Change and Fire Regime in the European Mediterranean Region. Jes?s San-Miguel-Ayanz, Marcos Rodrigues,Sandra Santos de Oliveira, Claudia Kemper Pacheco, Francisco Moreira, Beatriz Duguy, and Andrea Camia.- 3. Economic, Legal and Social Aspects of Post-Fire Management. Robert Mavsar, Elsa Varela, Piermaria Corona, Anna Barbati, and Graham Marsh.- 4. Fire Hazard and Flammability of European Forest Types. Gavriil Xanthopoulos, Carlo Calfapietra, and Paulo Fernandes.-