Post Wildfire Management: Erosion and Land Degradation Control, Soil Restoration, and Vegetation Cover Recovery
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainability, Biodiversity and Conservation".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2022) | Viewed by 9972
Special Issue Editors
Interests: physical geography; forest fires; soil erosion and land degradation; natural hazards
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: geographic information systems and remote sensing and their application to land use planning; geomorphology; geomorphological heritage; erosive processes following forest fires and mitigation measures
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Fire is an important Earth system process and the primary terrestrial ecosystem disturbance agent on a global scale, and it depends on vegetation characteristics, climate, and human activities. This phenomenon generates feedbacks by affecting biogeochemical cycles, vegetation composition and structure, land–atmosphere, water and heat exchanges, atmospheric chemistry and composition, and human health and property (Li et al., 2013, 2014).
The broad impact of a wildfire disturbance depends on the intensity or severity of the fire, its spatial distribution and extent, and the history and resilience of the site (Neary et al., 2005).
The extent and degree of the soil and vegetation disturbance by wildfire may have serious ecological implications for hydrologic and biological processes for years (Robichaud et al., 2020).
The increased frequency, magnitude, and extent of wildfires, over the past few decades, have become a major societal and environmental concern across the world. These concerns are further aggravated by the likely future climate conditions, increasingly propitious to wildfire ignition and spread (Bento-Gonçalves et al., 2013), where wildfires burn at high severity, and where erosion, runoff, and sedimentation may be triggered by high intensity post-fire rain events (Jonas et al., 2019).
Therefore, post-fire treatments to limit the potential for soil erosion are increasingly important given that the extensive area burned in recent decades is predicted to increase while human values at risk grow, and vegetation management becomes more challenging in the face of climate change (Jonas et al., 2019).
Thus, the present Special Issue of Sustainability intends to outline different approaches regarding post-wildfire management, showing the different perspectives and challenges we face in the 21st century.
As this is a crucial issue for sustainable development, strongly threatened by global changes, and since the production of literature today is fast and dispersed by countless theses, books, and articles, a Special Issue may gather the most recent results obtained in research in different regions around the globe.
This Special Issue aims to cover, without being limited to, the following areas:
- Wildfire impacts on soil and vegetation;
- Soil erosion, land degradation after wildfires;
- Short- and long-term post-fire vegetation recovery;
- Soil erosion, land degradation analysis, after wildfires, based on remote sensing data, GIS, GPS, etc.;
- Vegetation recovery analysis, after wildfires, based on remote sensing data, GIS, GPS, etc.;
- Assessment of burned forest area severity and post-fire regrowth using remote sensing data;
- Post-fire management practices;
- Soil restoration.
Prof. António Bento-Gonçalves
Prof. António Vieira
Prof. Maria José Roxo
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- wildfires
- recurrence, intensity, and severity
- soil, soil erosion, land degradation
- vegetation
- vegetation recovery
- post-wildfire management
- geospatial technologies
- global changes
- land use/cover changes
- soil regeneration
