IE School of International Relations, Madrid, Spain.
New Mexico Highlands University, Las Vegas, NM, USA.
Sci Total Environ. 2018 Jun 1;625:1405-1414. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.12.079. Epub 2018 Jan 12.
Chestnut forest ecosystems have a complex fire ecology; a result of centuries of co-evolution with pre-industrial era, cultural fire use by local communities based on Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). As the "forest transition" unfolds throughout Europe however, and the traditional role of chestnut forest ecosystems as producers of edible nuts and firewood declines, chestnut forest resilience may be endangered due to disturbance regime changes driven by transformations in land use linked to the rural exodus, state fire exclusion policies and climate change. In this study we compared the aboveground carbon stocks of two chestnut forests located in Central Spain which can be considered representative of divergent Europe-wide management trends. In the first site of Casillas traditional understory burning is still widespread and its impacts on forest stand structure can be characterized as maintaining "open canopy", low density stands dominated by old growth chestnut trees. In the second site of Rozas de Puerto Real traditional fire use has declined and natural ecological succession processes have resumed resulting in high density, "closed canopy" stands dominated by young chestnut tree saplings and increasing pine, oak and shrub encroachment. For both sites we used in-the-field monitoring methods to estimate aerial carbon stock using allometric equations. Our results suggest that carbon sequestration and species richness is greater in the traditionally managed chestnut forest stands. Since present demographic trends present difficulties for the maintenance of traditional fire use by local communities, we argue that future fire management of unmanaged chestnut stands and maintenance of traditional forest stands ought to be implemented through surrogate prescribed burning plans that replicate the seasonal timing and ecological effects of TEK based controlled burning.
栗林生态系统具有复杂的火生态学特性；这是其与工业化前时代共同进化的结果，当地社区基于传统生态知识（TEK）进行文化用火。然而，随着“森林转型”在整个欧洲展开，栗林生态系统作为可食用坚果和薪材生产者的传统角色逐渐衰退，栗林的恢复力可能会因土地利用变化导致的干扰模式变化而受到威胁，这些变化与农村移民、国家防火政策和气候变化有关。在这项研究中，我们比较了位于西班牙中部的两个栗林的地上碳储量，这两个栗林可以被认为代表了欧洲广泛的管理趋势。在第一个卡斯利亚斯的地点，传统的林下燃烧仍然很普遍，其对森林林分结构的影响可以被描述为保持“开阔树冠”，由老树组成的低密度林分。在第二个罗萨斯·德·波雷罗·雷亚尔的地点，传统的火利用已经减少，自然生态演替过程已经恢复，导致高密度、“封闭树冠”的林分，主要由年轻的栗树苗和越来越多的松树、橡树和灌木侵入。对于这两个地点，我们使用实地监测方法通过比例方程估计空中碳储量。我们的结果表明，在传统管理的栗林林分中，碳固存和物种丰富度更大。由于目前的人口趋势给当地社区维持传统用火带来了困难，我们认为，未来对无人管理的栗树林分的火灾管理和传统林分的维护，应该通过替代的规定性燃烧计划来实施，这些计划复制了基于 TEK 的控制性燃烧的季节性时间和生态效应。
