## 5 Conclusions  
The findings suggest that PB (spring and autumn) is a potentially valuable management tool for reducing fire hazard, with a scarce effect on short-term tree growth. The overall trend was for a reduction in growth. A longer-term study may be necessary to establish the recovery rate of the stands, particularly in a pure stand. The differencesbetween the mixed and pure stands were not critical to tree growth, which do not allow for a confirmation of the initial hypothesis about the weaker effect of perturbation in the mixed stand. Individual tree characteristics proved to be more important for growth than the type of stand, treatment or fire severity in low-intensity PB. The differences between the burning seasons were notable. The inclusion of some post-burn severity variables for the first time in tree growth models showed that the maximum scorch height influences tree growth. This is an easily measurable variable that must be considered in burning prescriptions. The recognized surface fire adaptations of _Pinus nigra_, such as the insulating capacity of the thick bark and the high crown height, completely protected the tree; however, special attention should be given to the variables related to exposition to a critical temperature in the outer and inner bark, particularly after spring burning. Although autumn prescribed burning seemed to have less of an impact on tree growth, disturbance in the other stand dynamics should be also considered. The litterfall biomass one year after prescribed burning was not a significant variable for tree growth. These findings could be used to improve burn prescriptions and the evaluation of PB in _P. nigra_ stands.  
[PERSON] designed the experiment, carried out the field and laboratory work, ran the data analysis, discussed the results and wrote the manuscript. [PERSON]-B. carried out the laboratory work and corrected the manuscript. [PERSON] supported the statistical analysis and corrected the manuscript. [PERSON] designed the experiment, carried out the field work and corrected the manuscript. [PERSON] designed the experiment, carried out the field work, corrected the manuscript and coordinated the research project. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This study was supported by the Spanish R&D GEPRF projects (Fire Severity Reduction through New Tools and Technologies for Integrated Forest Fire Protection Management) and VIS4 FIRE (Integrated Vulnerability of Forest Systems to Wildfire: Implications on Forest Management Tools) (RTA2014-00011-C06-01 and RTA2017-00042-C05-01). GEPRF and VIS4 FIRE are co-funded by the EU through the FEDER program. This study was also co-financed by INIA (FPI-SGIT 2015) and the European Social Fund through a grant awarded to Juncal Espinosa. [PERSON] was funded by projects AGL2015-73190-JIN, RYC-2017-23389 and PID2019-110273 RB-I00.  
Not applicable.  
We are grateful to [PERSON], [PERSON] and [PERSON] (CSIC-INIA) for assistance during the study, to members of the Cuenca Fire Service (SEIF Cuenca), who conducted the prescribed burning, and to The State Meteorological Agency of Spanish Government (AEMET) for providing meteorological data.  
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.