Fire impact on the northwestern Patagonia grasslands.

GHERMANDI L., S. GONZALEZ, J. FRANZESE, M. DE TORRES CURTH, P. PARODI

Wageningen, Holanda.

Congreso; Congress IALE 2007; 2007

Every year fires burn large landscape surfaces and produce important economic losses. The occurrence of fires and their behaviour are the consequence of complex interactions between anthropogenic actions and environmental variables. In semiarid ecosystems fires can induce changes in the productivity due to the replacement of palatable species for non-palatable ones and for the encroachment produced by woody species progress within grasslands. Besides, the fire produces changes in the biodiversity. We propose an approximation to this complex problem, by working at different scales (population, community and landscape) involving different tools as greenhouse and field experiments (studies of seed bank dynamics, vegetation monitoring) and mathematical models.