Development of a catalogue of damage in Portuguese forest associated with extreme extratropical cyclones.

Autor: Ribeiro SL; Departamento de Ciências Florestais e Arquitetura Paisagista (CIFAP), Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Quinta de Prados, 5001-801 Vila Real, Portugal. Electronic address: stephanier@utad.pt., Gonçalves A; Instituto Dom Luiz, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal; Centro de Investigación Mariña, Environmental Physics Laboratory (EPhysLab), Universidade de Vigo, Campus As Lagoas s/n, 32004 Ourense, Spain., Cascarejo I; Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Forestas, Senhora da Hora, 4460-281 Porto, Portugal., Liberato MLR; Instituto Dom Luiz, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal; Departamento de Engenharias, Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Quinta de Prados, 5001-801 Vila Real, Portugal., Fonseca TF; Departamento de Ciências Florestais e Arquitetura Paisagista (CIFAP), Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Quinta de Prados, 5001-801 Vila Real, Portugal; Centro de Estudos Florestais (CEF), Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade de Lisboa, Tapada da Ajuda, 1349-017 Lisboa, Portugal.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: The Science of the total environment [Sci Total Environ] 2022 Mar 25; Vol. 814, pp. 151948. Date of Electronic Publication: 2021 Nov 26.
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.151948
Abstrakt: In European forests, extreme wind events associated with severe extratropical cyclones are considered the main abiotic agent of forest vulnerability, leading to high economic losses in forests due to damage caused by the uprooting of trees and trunk breaks. Despite the importance recognized to severe cyclones and associated extreme phenomena, the impact on forest stocks is not always properly reported, leading to underestimation in the perception of losses, with direct consequences on forest governance decisions. This is particularly true in countries where other agents traditionally have a high impact, such as the countries under the influence of the Mediterranean, where wildfire is a recurrent menace with devastating effects. This work characterizes the situation observed in Portugal and presents the methodology followed to obtain information about forest damages and the procedure to identify the extreme extratropical cyclones responsible for those damages. As an example, available information and the recording of damage occurring in the Portuguese forest in winter 2017-2018 are presented and discussed. The study shows how difficult and demanding it is to obtain past information about the damage. In addition, there is high uncertainty about the precise identification of the event that caused the damage, as field records often occur several days or even weeks after the storm. To reduce the constraints, it is proposed to use a model whose skeleton of information has been designed to obtain useful information from traditional registries. The proposed model is useful for the characterization of losses and to support national policies to reduce the impact of damage associated with extreme wind events. The design of the catalogue can be used for recording information at the stand scale level by stakeholders and ensure compatibility with international databases for updating information purposes.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.
(Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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