(cest2017_01317) Silviculture treatments for reducing fire's potential severity in urban forests, N. Greece

摘要

Urban forest fires constitute a natural disaster presenting many particularities and specific difficulties. Such difficulties include the high number of people visiting urban forests as well as some specific forests characteristics which include the flammable species involved and the high levels of accumulated combustible biomass. The main purpose of the current research is to quantify the optimum combination of silvicultural treatments in order to efficiently reduce forest fire potential severity and contribute to their successful suppression by firefighting crews under field conditions. In order to simulate the basic fire environment of urban forests, two main experimental plots were established and several tree and topographical characteristics were estimated. Additionally, the NEXUS wildfire system was used to simulate forest fire potential behavior before and after the adoption of the silvicultural treatments that altered critical characteristics of the forest fire environment. The results clearly showed that specific silvicultural prescriptions altered the type of forest fire spreading potential, revealing the overall efficiency of preventing actions during forest management.