Fire impact on the northwestern Patagonian grassland

GHERMANDI LUCIANA; GONZALEZ SOFÍA; FRANZESE JORGELINA; PARODI PABLO; LESCANO MARÍA NATALIA

Wageningen, Holanda

Congreso; IALE world congress 2007; 2007

The fires burn great land surfaces over the years and produce important economic losses. The occurrence of fires and its behaviour are the consequence of a complex interaction between antropic 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 of woody species in grasslands. The fire besides provokes changes in the biodiversity. We propose to give an approach to this complex problem working at different scales (population, community and landscape) involving laboratory and field experiments (studies of seed bank dynamics, smoke and temperature effects in seeds germination, vegetation monitoring) and mathematical models. We consider necessary the future inclusion of the analysis of satellite imagines and aerial photographs using GIS tools to study the vegetation temporal changes and the fire regime. Our results give important information of the ecosystem behaviour, which can be used in Patagonia trigger a positive impact in the grasslands sustainable use.