Georeferenced database of representative sites including ecological data for North West of Pagatonia

MUÑOZ, M., M.F. GOMEZ AND G.E. DEFOSSÉ

Bruselas

Otro; Fire Paradox Scientific Reports; 2009

The European Commission - Fire Paradox Project

Executive summary   Fire has been a disturbance that has affected the Patagonian Forests along the Argentinean and Chilean sides of the Andean cordillera since immemorial times. This phenomenon continues nowadays, because the most fires have origin in human activities. The wildland urban interface is advancing towards the shrubland and forest areas; in addition to this, the productive activities around these areas significantly increase fire danger. Fire management agencies need accessible and accurate information, particularly about the areas under their jurisdiction as well as about the areas that could be potentially affected. The Fire Danger Rating Systems can represent the technician support for the operative personnel decisions and the control fires in progress. As a first step, in 2000, the National Plan for Fire Management (PNMF) started the adaptation, for Argentina, of the Fire Weather Index Subsystem taken from the Canadian Fire Danger Rating System. Thus, once fuel types and models are defined, the organizations will be able to adapt the Fire Behavior Prediction System and, by doing so, complement its use. In this work, a methodology to describe and classify fuel types from remote sensing data is proposed for three broad vegetation communities with large fire load and a growing issue in WUI for the North West of Patagonia. Exhaustive field samplings were carried out in order to obtain actual parameters of dead fuel load, which remain unknown up to the present, as well as qualitative description of spatial arrangement of surface and aboveground fuels. A georeferenced database was conformed for Austrocedrus chilensis (Don) Florin et Boutleje “ciprés de la cordillera” and Nothofagus antarctica (Forst.f.) Oerst. “ñire”, main species of the East line of the Andean forests. For shrublands of the Occidental District in the Patagonian Phitogeographic Province, whose representative species are Colliguaja intengerrima Gillies et Hook “duraznillo”, Schinus marchandii Barkley “molle” and Mullinum spinosum (Cav) Pers. “neneo”. In future works, fire behavior parameters are going to be assessed in fire tests or in fires in progress, fuel types are going to be modeled, and the methodology for determining fuel types from woody debris are going to be improved and adapted, particularlly for Nothofagus antarctica (ñire).