An Integrated Fire Research Framework

Integrated, multi- and inter-disciplinary studies are becoming increasingly demanded and required to understand the consequences of human activity on the natural environment. In a recent paper, Sandra Lavorel and colleagues highlight the importance of considering the feedbacks and interactions between several systems when examining landscape vulnerabilities to fire. They present a framework for integrated fire research that considers the fire regime as the central subsystem (FR in the figure below) and two feedback loops, the first with consequences for atmospheric and biochemical systems (F1) and the second that represents ecosystems services and human activity (F2). It is this second feedback loop in their framework that my research focuses.


To adequately quantify the fire-related vulnerability of different regions of the world the authors suggest that a better understanding of the relative contributions of climate, vegetation and human activity to the fire regime is required. For example, they suggest that an examination of the statistical relationships between spatio-temporal patterns evident in wildfire regimes and data on ecosystem structure, land use and other socio-economic factors. We made a very similar point in our PNAS paper and hope to continue to use the exponent (Beta) of the power-law frequency-area relationship that is evident in many model and empirical wildfire regimes to examine these interactions. One statistical relationship that might be investigated is between Beta and the level of forest fragmentations, thought to be a factor confounding research on the effects of fire suppression of wildfire regimes.

But the effects of landscape fragmentation can also be examined in a more mechanistic fashion using dynamic simulation models. Lavorel et al. mention the impacts of agricultural abandonment on the connectivity of fuels in Mediterranean landscapes which are attributed, in conjunction with a drier than average climate, to the exceptionally large fires that burned there during the 1990s. My PhD research examined the impacts of agricultural land abandonment on wildfire regimes in central Spain. I'm currently working on writing this work up for publication, but I plan on continuing to develop the model to more explicitly represent the F2 feedbacks loop shown in the figure above.

The potential socio-economic consequences of changing fire regimes are an area with a lot of room to improve our understanding. For example, some regions of the world, such as the Canadian boreal forest, are transitioning from a net sink for carbon to a net source (due to emission during burning). If carbon sinks are considered in future emission trading systems, regions such as are losing a potential future economic commodity. Lavorel et al. also discuss the interesting subject of potential land conflict due to mismatches in the time scales between land planning and fire occurrence. In Indonesia for example, years which burn large areas force re-allocation of land development plans by local government. Often however the processes of developing these plans is not fast enough to forestall the exploitation by local residents of the new land available for occupation and use.

The need for increased research in this area is highlighted by the case studies for Alaskan and African savannah ecosystems presented by Lavorel et al. Whilst discussion of the wildfire regime and atmospheric/biochemical feedbacks can be discussed in detail, poor understanding of the ecosystem services/human activity feedbacks prevents such detailed discussion.

The framework Lavorel et al. present is a very useful way to conceptualise and plan for future research in this field. They suggest (p.47-48) that "Assessments of vulnerability of land systems to fire demand regional studies that use a systemic approach that focuses on the feedback loops described here" and "... will require engaging a collection of multiscale and interdisciplinary regional studies". In many respects, I expect my future work to contribute to this framework, particularly with regards the human activity (F2) feedback loop.