Emilio Chuvieco (Madrid, 62 years old) has spent half his life studying fire since he began his research career in 1987 at the University of Berkeley (USA). In all this time he has witnessed the emergence of a new type of fire, fires of the sixth generation, linked to climate change but also to demographic change. He is Director of the Chair of Environmental Ethics at the University of Alcalá de Henares and also coordinates the Alcalá Center’s Environmental Remote Sensing Research Group. His team uses satellites and the LIDAR (Airborne Laser) system to prevent fires, analyze their damage and allow for their possible recovery. Awarded the Jaume I prize for environmental protection in 2022, he is the scientific director of FirEUrisk, a project funded by the European Commission in 2022 to identify and minimize the risk of extreme fires in Europe. In the interview, he makes it clear that having planes is not enough, that the fire has to be put out long before it starts.
Questions. Traditionally, these months should clear the forests for the summer. But he didn’t even have time to assemble the equipment. Fires in Castellón and Teruel, in Asturias and Cantabria, in Galicia… What is happening?
Answer. In Spain in the north there were always fires at the end of winter, at the beginning of spring. It is very rare in the Mediterranean region and this year is a rather unusual case. We don’t know if the trend will continue. A few years ago at a fire ecology convention in California, the state forest official told us that they already had a fire season pretty much all year round. I don’t know if this will also happen in Spain, but maybe it can happen in the southern areas. The truth is that we have had a very dry winter and once the heat increases a bit and there are dry storms and strong winds it is very difficult to control.
Q But the fire in Castellón lasted a week, isn’t that too long?
R When the fires are very large, as appears to be the case here, the aircraft do what they can. And in an area of great relief, the earthly means are also doing what they can. If the fire enters a very strong relief area, such as ravines, it can increase its speed. The best thing to do in these cases is to be as far away as possible. With the prevailing wind conditions and the dry vegetation, turning is very difficult. There are those who think that three planes can put out any fire. But it is not like that.
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Q And while dozens of fires break out to the north in Asturias, Cantabria and Galicia.
R In the north there have always been many fires related to grazing. Extensive livestock farming there uses fire to clear brush and give access to the cows. In fact, a few years ago there was a program where the Ministry itself and the Autonomous Communities helped the farmers to burn, that is, the mandatory burning. But sometimes it gets out of hand and burns other areas. On the other hand, there is the phenomenon of foehn winds which, when they pass through the Cantabrian Mountains, fall very dry on the other slope, greatly increasing the ignition conditions. Two things are being combined, human management and the climate issue.
“There are those who think that three planes can put out any fire. But it is not like that”
Q According to a document from the FirEUrisk project, 95% of fires are caused and most are due to carelessness or agricultural misconduct. But these traditional practices have always been there. What has changed so that what was not reckless in the past is now?
R Climate change is always talked about and it matters. But in Spain we have also seen a very important social change. Much formerly farmed land is no longer farmed, the forest is not being used as economically as it used to be, much of the extensive livestock farming has been abandoned, the rural population is aging… All this leads to fuel piling up and if there is an accident, 4,000 hectares from the previous attempt will now have burned down.
Professor Chuvieco uses satellites to determine fire risk. santi burgos
Q How do you work on the human factor?
R While in Japan everyone knows what to do when there’s an earthquake, in Spain we don’t know what to do when there’s a fire. People, especially those who live or are in rural areas, need training. If you go to a fire brigade congress, there are many foresters there. There are many people working in the mechanics that are spreading. But you don’t see that many sociologists or human geographers working on these questions.
Q Australia’s 2020 fires, 2019’s Siberia fires, California’s recurring fires, Chile last summer… Is the planet burning?
R We have been using fire for 450,000 years. In other words, it has long coexisted with humans and is a natural factor in many ecosystems. In fact, Mediterranean vegetation is adapted to fire. What is happening now? On a global scale, we see a number of anomalies. We have just published a study with French and Chinese colleagues on the fires in the boreal zones, both in Siberia and in Canada and Alaska, in 2021. The data is very anomalous as it is the first year that there have been strong drought anomalies in both regions at once. In Australia, some areas in the south-east of the country burned seven times more than the average for the past 20 years. These are sixth-generation fires that occur during drought and extremely abnormal heat waves. They are so named because patterns of behavior are observed that are not observed at other times, particularly in relation to fire energy (length and intensity of flame front) and propagation velocities. Conventional prevention systems are not designed for this. It’s what you need to change: invest a lot more in prevention. And that means pastoral administration, promotion of the rural economy. If there are no people in the countryside, if there is no specific economic activity of farming, then obviously, if there is a fire like that in Castellón, there will be a catastrophe.
“When the field has no people, when there is no specific economic activity of farming, disaster ensues.”
Q Will they stop being anomalies to become the norm?
R That seems to be the trend. When we talk about climate change, we’re talking about a long time series, 30 years, not a year where something unusual happens. And of course, when the 15 warmest years in instrument history, i.e. the last 150 years, have happened in this century, you start to realize that it’s not so much an anomaly anymore as it is a trend.
Q One of the foundations of the FirEUrisk project is risk identification. What has not been done and what should be done?
R Fire risk systems are almost entirely based on weather, which is very important. But you must also consider the risk and vulnerability of potentially combustible areas. And that’s what we’re doing in this project, taking into account not only the meteorological aspects, but also the properties of the fuel. For example, dead fuel moisture is usually evaluated using meteorological variables. It’s what burns first, but the live fuel situation is almost never considered. And we do that with satellite images. Fuel wealth is also relevant. We also see this with satellite data and with LIDAR, an airborne laser. On the other hand, there is also the vulnerability part where nothing has been done.
Q Vulnerability?
R There is almost no system that takes into account that there are rooms that are more vulnerable because they are more valuable or are less exposed to fire. For example, a cork oak tree has very strong bark and can last longer. And other species that die directly with a small fire. There are those that grow back more easily, those that grow back from the roots, such as oaks or rebollo, which will have it easier. On the other hand, germinating species such as pines have a much harder time. On the other hand, the area may be more vulnerable because it has an aging population because it costs much more to evacuate or fight the fire. Risk management not only buys more aircraft and more extinguishing agents, but above all tries to reduce it before the event occurs.
“Risk management isn’t just buying more planes, it’s trying to reduce it before the event happens.”
Q What does the LIDAR system and the satellites do?
R Satellites allow you to estimate the conditions before the fire, primarily by the moisture of living fuel. Plants reflect more in a certain band of the spectrum the drier they are. With the LIDAR and also the satellites, we are studying the structural properties of the vegetation, the biomass, its height, its density… One of the works that we are doing is with a LIDAR that is located in the International Space Station and is taking data most of the planet
Q What kind of fire can a satellite detect?
R It depends on the resolution. NASA satellites have a sensor with a resolution of 375 meters. However, since the energy emitted by a hotspot is exponential rather than linear, it is assumed that the entire pixel does not have to be on fire to detect it. With the current Meteosat you have a poorer resolution of two kilometers. So the fires it can detect are much larger, but we have images every 10 minutes while NASA detects once a day. The current Meteosat is often used for fires in areas with little terrestrial information, such as Africa. But here in Europe it is not used yet because it is considered inaccurate. The third generation of Meteosat is now deployed, which will have higher resolution in both time and space and a channel to detect fires.
“Controlled burns, which are already being introduced in Europe, used to be an abomination”
Q Another pillar of FirEUrisk is risk reduction. Which elements are decisive here?
R The fire is essentially a result of three factors: weather, vegetation and human action. You can’t do much with the weather, but you can with the fuel and the human factor. What can you do with the fuel? Are you reducing the quantity and how is it reduced? Well there are three options, mainly incineration, controlled incineration, something that is already being introduced in Europe. Before it was an abomination. The second remedy is grazing, which works best for me because burning has its risks. But herding requires people, it requires cattle. Here again we have the demographic problem. And the third means is mechanical removal of fuel. If we could install small biomass power plants in forest areas, biomass would be a renewable energy and it would be a way to solve two problems. Reduce biomass while generating energy at the same time. There was also a whole timber industry that we gave up. We want to reduce paper consumption. But we must not forget that paper is also carbon, which is stored stably. Cutting down trees and planting others is perfectly reasonable. But it seems that chopping down a tree is something of a sacrilege these days.
Q And at the political level, can anything else be done?
R Sometimes laws made with an urban mentality don’t work much in these places. There is, for example, preventive forestry. It is very difficult to do forest management with all the regulations that make life difficult. This is what forest owners complain about, that they can’t cut, and that obviously gives the fuel a continuity it shouldn’t have. There must undoubtedly be protected zones, natural parks, nature reserves, but there are many other zones that need to be managed. I think you have to cut down trees as long as you replant them afterwards.
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