Transforming Rural Landscape towards Fire Resilience and Landscape Sustainability
Authors: Magalhães Manuela R. , Pena Selma B. , Cunha Natália S. , Franco Luísa M. , Müller Ana 
Published: October 2022

After the fires occurred in 2017 and 2018 in Portugal, the imperative need to plan for sustainable and fire resilient landscapes led to the implementation of the Landscape Transformation Program. However, it is still lacking a landscape planning methodology to achieve those resilient landscapes. This paper presents a landscape plan for a fire-prone landscape located in the Centre region of continental Portugal - Serras da LousÃ£ e AÃ§or. This landscape is characterised by steep slopes (70% of the total area) and is dominated by highly combustible coverings, such as eucalyptus (27.89 %), maritime pine (28.06 %), other coniferous (10.08 %) and shrubs (18.91 %). Fires have occurred frequently and 96 % of the case study's total area was burned between 1975 and 2020. The landscape plan here presented was based on the FIRELAN model and goes a step further by proposing a progressive landscape transformation. FIRELAN integrates fire resilience, ecological sustainability, and economic viability. In this model, the landscape components, which can be physical, biological or cultural, are organised in two main infrastructures - the Ecological Network and the Fire Resilient Landscape Infrastructure - and in Complementary Areas. The Ecological Network ensures the ecological functioning of the landscape by emphasising the quality or potentiality of biophysical components, in articulation with the nature conservation and at-risk areas, underlying the provision of multiple functions valuable to society. The Fire Resilient Landscape Infrastructure promotes the landscape discontinuities related to land morphology, in association with less combustible land uses, and includes the cultural management in the urban-rural interface, roads, and power grid. This infrastructure is divided in two, the Primary and the Secondary Fire Resilient Landscape Infrastructures. The last one includes the areas with slopes greater than 25%, located outside the Fire Resilient Primary Infrastructure. As to the Complementary Areas, these correspond to the interstices (compartments with slopes less than 25%) of the infrastructures. Since these areas have low ecological value, they can allocate more artificial land uses. The implementation of the landscape plan is defined in two temporal phases: the landscape plan for the Scenario 2030, which consists on the implementation of the Primary Fire Resilient Landscape Infrastructure (51%), and the landscape plan for the Scenario 2050, that adds the implementation of the Secondary Fire Resilient Landscape Infrastructure (37%) and Complementary Areas (9 %). This landscape plan represents a paradigm shift from a landscape dominated by eucalyptus and maritime pine to a dominant forest of native species (such as oaks), archetypical species (such as chestnut the walnut - both for wood or fruit - the wild cherry and others) and also riparian species (alder, willows, poplar, ash, elm, etc.). Differentiating the final proposal into two phases makes it possible to distinguish implementation priorities, since the application of the model implies a substantial transformation of the current landscape, with high implementation costs. The payment for ecosystem services to the landowners during the paradigm transition period, which is expected to be 20 to 30 years, is recommended to allow the plan implementation.