Risk mitigation involves practical guidelines which reduce extreme wildfire risk conditions by evaluating and harmonising different strategies that are used around Europe.
Reducing exposure and building resilience into fire-prone landscapes are vital aspects of mitigating against fires and their potential to propagate into larger, potentially uncontrollable wildfires. This can be achieved through a number of management approaches that reduce the available fuel load within a landscape, each of which have a varying degree of suitability, dependant on the landscape in question (Neidermeier et al., 2023) . Within the European context the most traditional of these is the use of silvopastoralism, the use of herbivores to control vegetation. Such an approach is the most suitable for steep and inaccessible land. The decline of pastoralism for food and other animal products across many rural areas due to socio-economic changes has led to a build of fuels, potentially aiding the spread and intensity of fires.
The use of machinery to reduce fuel loads is more suitable to larger tracts of land and those closer to transport and access routes. In forested landscapes that already employ mechanical means for timber harvesting, with forest roads and logging trails, the use of mechanical methods for reducing fire risk is potentially the best option. Small-scale mechanical removal of fuel is also a useful approach for risk management when considering the Wildland-Urban-Interface (Plathner et al., 2023). The use of brush-cutters or even lawnmowers can reduce the risk of fire spread to structures such as houses, where animal grazing or prescribed fires may not be suitable. In some countries the management of fuels in and around structures is a legal requirement, as is the case in Portugal. Within FirEUrisk the importance of understanding risk and avoidance of risk in these WUI areas has been a core theme. This is both in terms of understanding the spatial context (Bar-Massada et al., 2023) and future scenarios (Deliverable D.3.6 - Future vulnerability and exposure to future fire incl. changes along WUI).
Finally, the use of controlled or prescribed burning can be utilised to reduce fuel loads. This approach is not practiced universally across Europe, where differing legal frameworks restrict or even prohibit the use of fire to control fuels. Controlled burning must be strictly supervised and is heavily dependent on the prevailing weather, fuel conditions and effect on the ecology of an area, meaning that it can only be undertaken a specific times of the year, and not necessarily on an annual basis. In addition to this, the emissions arising from prescribed burning can potentially have a negative effect on human health. Despite the limitations on its use, controlled burning remains an effective method for removing fuels under the appropriate conditions and in suitable locations. Within FirEUrisk the use of controlled burning has been explored through training and documented in Deliverable D.2.2 - Report on training sessions for agricultural use of prescribed burning and a better understanding of the risk associated with emissions arising from such burning.
Mitigation of risk is not solely associated with management of fuels, though this is major element for reducing risk, ignitions are root cause of fires, whether this is natural ignitions, such as those arising from lighting strikes, or human ignitions. There is very little we can do as a society to reduce natural ignitions, but human ignitions are an area where mitigation can be undertaken.
Human ignitions can be split into two main categories, accidental or intended. The first of which can be split into a number of sub-groups, negligence such as campfires, the burning of refuse or agricultural waste or discarded cigarettes, for example. Additionally, operation-based ignitions are also a major source of ignitions, this is particularly the case in central and northern European managed forests, where sparks from machinery or the vehicle engine heat can cause fires. The reduction of operational-based ignitions was approached in FirEUrisk through the Deliverable D.2.1 - Guidelines for Reducing Ignitions. The most effective way to reduce human ignitions, whether this is accidental or negligence is through education combined with regulation, such as restricting open fires and forestry operations during times of high fire-weather danger. Finally, Europe’s violent past continues to haunt its landscapes through the concentrations of munitions and ordnance from WW1 and WW2 Germany/Poland and Italy/ Slovenia, for example. These literal “time-bombs” are both a source of ignition, as they rise to the surface and become heated by the sun, and a danger during the suppression of fires where their existence prevents fire-fighting activities, mitigating against the risks associated with ordnance is normally achieved through avoidance, e.g. not conducting suppression activities in heavily laden areas.
It is these suppression activities that are also subject to mitigation approaches to reduce risk. Despite all of the above mentioned mitigation activities fires will continue to ignite and propagate and suppression will be required, bringing with it the need to protect those engaged in their suppression. The geographical change in the distribution of wildfires due to the changing climate means that fires will occur in areas not previously considered as fire-prone. FirEUrisk approached this topic with the Deliverable D.2.6 - Handbook for fire fighters.
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Bar-Massada, A., Alcasena, F., Schug, F., Radeloff, V.C., 2023. The wildland – urban interface in Europe: Spatial patterns and associations with socioeconomic and demographic variables. Landsc. Urban Plan. 235, 104759. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2023.104759
Neidermeier, A.N., Zagaria, C., Pampanoni, V., West, T.A.P., Verburg, P.H., 2023. Mapping opportunities for the use of land management strategies to address fire risk in Europe. J. Environ. Manage. 346, 118941. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.118941
Vermina Plathner, F., Sjöström, J., Granström, A., 2023. Garden structure is critical for building survival in northern forest fires – An analysis using large Swedish wildfires. Saf. Sci. 157, 105928. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2022.105928
Sjöström J, Granström A (2023) A phenology-driven fire danger index for northern grasslands. International Journal of Wildland Fire 32, 1332-1346. https://doi.org/10.1071/WF23013
FirEUrisk Deliverables related to mitigation– Available at https://fireurisk.eu/deliverables/
Deliverable D.2.1 - Guidelines for reducing ignitions
Deliverable D.2.2 - Report on training sessions for agricultural use of prescribed burning
Deliverable D.2.3 - Guidelines for fuel-relevant land management strategies (FRLMS): applicability, socioeconomics, and environmental concerns
Deliverable D.2.4 - Map of fuel relevant land management strategy (FRLMS) options at European scale
Deliverable D.2.5 - Online modelling tool for extreme fire behaviour and smoke emission and dispersion
Deliverable D.2.6 - Handbook with guidelines for fire fighters to face extreme fires, fires in WUI and fires in high latitudes/altitudes
Deliverable D.2.7 - Report analysing destructive fires with a protocol to collect feedback from next fires