Suchergebnisse

Available data show that future changes in global change drivers may lead to an increasing impact of fires on terrestrial ecosystems worldwide. Yet, fire regime changes in highly humanised fire-prone regions are difficult to predict because fire effects may be heavily mediated by human activities We investigated the role of fire suppression strategies in synergy with climate change on the resulting fire regimes in Catalonia (north-eastern Spain). We used a spatially-explicit fire-succession model at the landscape level to test whether the use of different firefighting opportunities related to observed reductions in fire spread rates and effective fire sizes, and hence changes in the fire regime. We calibrated this model with data from a period with weak firefighting and later assess the potential for suppression strategies to modify fire regimes expected under different levels of climate change. When comparing simulations with observed fire statistics from an eleven-year period with firefighting strategies in place, our results showed that, at least in two of the three sub-regions analysed, the observed fire regime could not be reproduced unless taking into account the effects of fire suppression. Fire regime descriptors were highly dependent on climate change scenarios, with a general trend, under baseline scenarios without fire suppression, to large-scale increases in area burnt. Fire suppression strategies had a strong capacity to compensate for climate change effects. However, strong active fire suppression was necessary to accomplish such compensation, while more opportunistic fire suppression strategies derived from recent fire history only had a variable, but generally weak, potential for compensation of enhanced fire impacts under climate change. The concept of fire regime in the Mediterranean is probably better interpreted as a highly dynamic process in which the main determinants of fire are rapidly modified by changes in landscape, climate and socioeconomic factors such as fire suppression strategies. ; This study has received financial support from the projects CGL2008-05506-C02-01/BOS, CGL2011-29539/BOS and Consolider Montes CSD2008-00040 granted by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (MEC). Additional funding to LB and MC was received from the Catalan government through projects 2010 BE 272 and the 'Beatriu de Pinós' Programme (2009 BP-B 00342).

Wild mushrooms contribute to a variety of ecosystem services. The expected warmer and drier conditions for the Mediterranean region as a consequence of climate change, are raising concerns about future mushroom productivity due to potential reduction of soil water availability for fungi. The aim of this study was to increase our understanding of the interaction between climate and soil moisture in relation to their impact on mushroom productivity in Mediterranean forests. Mushroom yield data were obtained from 28 permanent mushroom inventory plots intensively monitored in Maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Ait.) stands of northeastern Iberian Peninsula. Annual productivity of total, edible and marketed mushrooms was obtained from measurements conducted every week during the autumn fruiting season for years 2008–2015. Historical weather conditions were obtained through data interpolation from meteorological stations. Soil moisture data were obtained from continuous plot-level measurements. A process-based soil water balance model was used to predict soil moisture under two climate change scenarios, using the predictions of two different regional climate models. Mixed-effects models using either precipitation or soil moisture as predictors, in combination with other weather variables, were fitted to annual mushroom occurrence and yield data. Mushroom yield was primarily dependent on weather and soil moisture conditions during the same month, with the exception of precipitation, whose effects exhibited a one-month delay. High temperatures limited mushroom yield at the beginning of the fruiting season, but tended to enhance it towards the end. The analysis revealed no apparent negative effect of climate change on long-term mushroom productivity, but rather the opposite (i.e., predicted median productivity of marketed mushrooms for 2016–2100 was 23–93% higher compared to the current yield), mainly due to an elongation of the fruiting season arising from the combined effect of increased precipitation at the beginning of the season and warmer temperatures at the end. ; This work benefited from the Erasmus Mundus Master Program MEDFOR (Mediterranean Forestry and Natural Resources Management) which provided a scholarship to the first author. Sergio de Miguel was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 MultiFUNGtionality Marie Skłodowska-Curie (IF-EF No 655815), Miquel De Cáceres benefited from a Ramon y Cajal fellowship (RYC-2012-11109), and José Antonio Bonet benefited from a Serra-Húnter Fellowship provided by the Generalitat of Catalunya. Additional funding came from the research projects MYCOSYTEMS (AGL2015-66001-C3-1-R − MEC Spain) and FORESTCAST (CGL2014- 59742-C2-2-R), and from the European project StarTree (No. 311919). Special thanks to Mr. Antoine Cabon for his assistance with R software.

Forest ecosystems provide a wide range of goods and services to society and host high levels of biodiversity. Nevertheless, forest ecosystem services (ES) are often quantified and assessed using simplified methodologies (e.g., proxy methods based exclusively on Land Use Land Cover maps) that introduce substantial uncertainty in the analysis by ignoring, for instance, the species composition and spatial configuration of the ecosystems studied. In this work we defined and calculated a set of 12 indicators of several ES for the forests of the highly populated region of Catalonia (North-eastern Iberian Peninsula). The indicators combined different sources of information such as forest surveys, ecological model predictions and official statistics, but also included additional land cover information. All ES indicators were aggregated at the municipality level to compare their values and distribution patterns. We assessed spatial trade-offs and synergies among ES, as well as their relationships with a set of socioeconomic, climatic and biodiversity variables using correlation analyses and mixed-effects models. The results suggest a clustering of provisioning and regulating ES in mountainous zones towards the North of the study area. These two types of services showed a high degree of spatial similarity and presented high positive correlations. In contrast, cultural ES showed a more scattered pattern, which included lower elevation areas in the South of the study region. Climatic conditions were the main determinants of the spatial variability in the supply of the different ES, with most indicators being positively associated with precipitation and negatively associated with temperature. In addition, biodiversity (particularly woody species richness) showed positive relations with most of these ES, while socioeconomic variables (such as population density and the percentage employment in agriculture) showed negative associations with most of them. The combination of information from different data sources (including primary data) allowed for a detailed analysis of forest ES, likely removing some of the problems derived from approaches based only on proxy methods. In addition, the use of municipalities as study unit makes results directly relevant to management and planning strategies operating at this scale (e.g., forest management and planning). ; Funding was obtained from the Catalan Office for Climate Change (OCCC) through project ForESMap, from EU FORESTERRA program (INFORMED project) and from the Spanish government (CGL2013-46808-R, AGL2015-66001-C3-1-R and CGL2014-59742). We also thank the ECOMETAS (CGL2014-53840-REDT) network for support. This study also received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme within the framework of the MultiFUNGtionality Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (IF-EF) under grant agreement No655815 and from the Generalitat de Catalunya (Serra-Hunter Fellow). JVRD was supported by the Government of Asturias and the FP7-Marie Curie-COFUND program of the European Commission (Grant 'Clarín' ACA17-02).