Project properties
Title Unraveling fuel management effectiveness in mitigating wildfire hazard
Group Soil Physics and Land Management group
Project type thesis
Credits 24-39
Supervisor(s) Joao Pedro Nunes
Examiner(s) Coen Ritsema
Contact info joao.carvalhonunes@wur.nl
Begin date 2021/05/25
End date
Description The occurrence of wildfire events constitutes one of the most devastating natural disasters, with important environment and socio-economic consequences. The Mediterranean region is strongly affected by recurring wildfires, and on average almost half a million hectares burn per year. Recently, there has been an increase in fire hazard (particularly in Iberia), as the result of joint impacts of climate (e.g.dry and hot summers), human activities (e.g.ignitions) and changes in land cover (e.g.increase in natural vegetation continuity at the expense of forestry and agro-pastoral activities).

Fuel treatments (e.g.fuel segmentation, prescribed burning) have long been identified as key to decreasing fire size and fire severity, as well as shown to provide a relevant support for fire suppression, leading to reductions in fire size and severity in real wildfire events; and thus, ultimately, simplifying fire management decisions, and protecting lives and assets. Despite this, land managers anddecision-makers tend to overlook such evidence, and current fire management focus mainly on suppression. The few existing fuel treatmentsare conducted without any assessment of wildfire impacts at the landscape level. Hence, it is crucial to deepen the current understanding of preventive fuel management and to support land managers in creating lessflammable landscapes.

Research Objective/Question

This study aims to understand the full effectiveness of both projected and desired land management strategies in reducing wildfire hazard. More precisely, the student will use historical wildfires to evaluate the magnitude of the impacts that could have been avoided if specific land management strategies would have been implemented before the fire season.

What is expected from the student (type of research)

The student will operate a wildfire behaviour model implemented at ULisbonto:

1.Calibrate and validate the model using the wildfire of 2018 in the Monchique mountains, southern Portugal, as reference;
2.Apply the model to evaluate and quantify the effect of planned fuel breaks using specific metrics (e.g.wildfire connectivity, firelineintensity, burn probability, etc);
3.Determine key-areas where land management should be targeted as priority for fuel reduction.
Used skills
Requirements Basic knowledge in GIS software, ecology and statistics; knowledge of R would be an asset