Short-term effect of wildfires and prescribed fires on ecosystem services

Fire is a natural element of the environment that can have pervasive and beneficial impacts on the ecosystems. Wildfires can induce dramatic socio-economic and environmental impacts, while prescribed fires can have several benefits. Therefore ‘fire is a good servant but a bad master’. Depending on t...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Pereira, Paulo, Bogunovic, Igor, Zhao, Wenwu, Barceló, Damià
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/242716
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/242716
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Fire
Synergies
Ecosystem services
Trade-offs
Descripción
Sumario:Fire is a natural element of the environment that can have pervasive and beneficial impacts on the ecosystems. Wildfires can induce dramatic socio-economic and environmental impacts, while prescribed fires can have several benefits. Therefore ‘fire is a good servant but a bad master’. Depending on the way, it is used can be advantageous or detrimental. Here, we study the short-term effect of wildfires and prescribed fires on regulating, provisioning and cultural ecosystem services. Wildfires occurrence have a detrimental effect on all ecosystem services, except Pest and Diseases Control and Knowledge Systems. On the other hand, prescribed fires use has a positive/neutral impact on most ecosystem services studied. The trade-offs observed using this practice are related to negative impacts related to greenhouse gases and pollution emission (regulating) and decreasing biomass availability for energy and timber value (provisioning).