After the Wildfires: The Processes of Social Learning of Forest Owners’ Associations in Central Catalonia, Spain

Abstract

Over the last few decades, according to the Forest Fire Prevention Services of the Catalan Government, a small number of fires (less than 1%) have been responsible for the destruction of more than three quarters of the burnt forest area in Catalonia. However, while these wildfires have transformed many components of the landscape, including its vegetation and soils, they offer landowners the opportunity to learn from past decisions. This article aims to analyze the responses of forest owners in Central Catalonia after the great forest fires of the 1980s and 1990s, including the way in which their objectives and strategies are defined and their actions implemented. By conducting interviews with the members of forest owners’ associations and by means of participant observation at association meetings, we seek to examine the processes of social learning experienced by this collective and to identify the mechanisms used in their efforts to create socio-ecological structures that are less vulnerable to fire. Associationism is unusual in the world of Catalan forest ownership, despite the great number of private forest areas. In our results, however, associationism emerges as a strategy for cooperation, a recognition of the need to link ecological and social structures in the territory, and one which we define as a form of ‘socio-ecological resistance’. Our study highlights that the goals and actions of forest owners’ associations have both an instrumental and emotional component, so that reason, emotion and action have come to form the three vertices of socio-ecological resistance to fire.

Different Strategies for Resilience to Wildfires: The Experience of Collective Land Ownership in Galicia (Northwest Spain)

“…Thus, there arises the necessity of specific programs about the use of fire for forest management. In fact, several authors have also highlighted the necessity of promoting participative methods and incorporate environmental service assessment as key elements in the planning and decision-making processes [26][27][28]. In the present case in northwest Spain where communal forests are common but where the managed area is not very large, the challenge is to address the fire problem at the landscape scale in order to be effective.…”

“…The responses in most of the communities would be included in the resilience defined by Folke [3] that has somewhat more recently been applied to forests by Timpane-Padgham [15] and Bowdith et al [6]. However, some responses observed in some communities after fire (e.g., reducing stand density) are aligned with the idea of co-existing with fire [45], anticipating future conditions to minimize the effects of future fires [27]. This type of response is similar to that observed in other areas of high fire incidence such as the southern United States and Australia [28,46].…”

“…These different strategies imply the assumption of changes in planning by stakeholders and land managers that try to anticipate future conditions in order to minimize the effects of future fires [25]. For these objectives to be achieved, it will be essential to work inside and outside the landowner's communities [26,27]. An increase in the technical knowledge and education on fire behavior will be also critical [28,29].…”

Machine Learning Methods and Synthetic Data Generation to Predict Large Wildfires

“…The study area is located in southwestern Spain (37°28′42″ N, 6°54′19″ W, WGS-84), more specifically in western Andalusia, covering the province of Huelva. Every year, there are large recurrent wildfires in the area, defined, in this study, as those that exceed a burn area higher than 500 hectares [ 75 , 76 ]. While in Spain as a whole, the percentage of large wildfires is low, 0.48% in 2017, in Huelva, there is always at least one per year [ 8 ].…”

Blazing the trail: Social innovation supporting wildfire-resilient territories in Catalonia (Spain)

“…This recurring issue had a major disrupting effect on local inhabitants living off the affected lands. In response, forest owners' associations were created, not only to help each other, but also to share the costs of fire suppression, since at the time firefighting was not provided as a public service and firefighting assistance had to be paid by forest owners themselves (ADF005; Rodriguez-Carreras et al, 2020 ).…”