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International Journal of Wildland Fire International Journal of Wildland Fire Society
Journal of the International Association of Wildland Fire
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Soil responses to fire in Mediterranean forest landscapes in relation to the previous stage of land abandonment

Joan Llovet A D , Manuel Ruiz-Valera A , Ramon Josa B and V. Ramon Vallejo A C
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Centro de Estudios Ambientales del Mediterráneo (CEAM), Departament d’Ecologia, Ciències Fase V, Ap. 99, E-03080 Alacant, Spain.

B Departament d’Enginyeria Agroalimetària i Biotecnologia, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Edifici D4, Escola Superior d’Agricultura de Barcelona, Avinguda del Canal Olímpic 15, E-08860 Castelldefels, Spain.

C Departament de Biologia Vegetal, Universitat de Barcelona, Avinguda Diagonal 645, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain.

D Corresponding author. Email: juan.llovet@ua.es

International Journal of Wildland Fire 18(2) 222-232 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF07089
Submitted: 3 July 2007  Accepted: 24 June 2008   Published: 3 April 2009

Abstract

The current paper presents a study on the interaction between land abandonment and soil responses to fire in old agricultural terraced landscapes. The study area, located near the Guadalest reservoir (E Spain), was partially affected by a forest fire in August 1998. We monitored burned and unburned areas as well as two pre-fire stand ages since agricultural abandonment: 8–15 years (dry grassland with young Pinus halepensis) and >35 years (mature pine forest). We analysed soil surface structure, water repellency and infiltrability, and we monitored plant response, runoff and sediment production for a period of 7 years after the fire. Aggregate stability increased with both time-since-abandonment and fire. Water repellency increased with land abandonment but was not affected by fire. Unburned erosion plots produced almost no runoff, even during heavy rainstorms. Fire scarcely modified runoff and erosion rates in recently abandoned terraces. A dry period following fire restricted plant recovery in burned pine forest. Burned forest plots registered runoff and sediment yields one to four orders of magnitude higher than unburned forest plots. In burned pine forest, the maximum sediment production was registered 3 years after the fire, when rainstorms took place and plant cover was still low. Old agricultural terraces colonised by pines were found to be both vulnerable to degradation as a consequence of fire and highly dependent on post-fire rain for their recovery.

Additional keywords: agricultural terraced landscapes, fire vulnerability, Mediterranean soils, pine forest.


Acknowledgements

We thank Rosario López-Ros and other colleagues for their collaboration during the hard working days in the field. José Antonio Alloza collaborated by mapping the spatial arrangement of the plots and Jackie Scheiding helped us with the English corrections. The people and landowners in the Guadalest Valley kindly facilitated our work. The present research was supported by the European Union projects LUCIFER (ENV4-CT96–0320) and SPREAD (EVG1–2001–00043), and by the Program CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 (GRACCIE Project). CEAM is supported by Generalitat Valenciana and Fundació Bancaixa.


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