The energy valorization of forest biomass and by-products and waste from agricultural activity can contribute to reducing the fuel load in forests and in the immediate environment of towns and cities in Mediterranean countries.
This reduction in the amount of biofuel would help to increase the resilience of forests, increasingly stressed by climate change, and It would improve the safety of people and property. who live in urban centers facing large forest fires, whose incidence and danger are increasing in Europe and throughout the world.
Reducing the forest fuel load or managing by-products of agricultural activity for subsequent energy valorization, or in other bioeconomy circuits, must be done with the utmost care. guarantees of sustainability and safety as established by the various European and national regulations.
To help public entities, companies, and individuals demonstrate this, there are tools such as forest management plans and independent certification systems, which guarantee the sustainability of forestry uses and of forest or agricultural biomass specifically used in the energy sector (SURE system).
Why are forest fires more dangerous now than they were four decades ago?
The Mediterranean natural environment is being transformed into a continuous forest landscape which accumulates a large amount of biomass, both living and dead, in the form of trees and shrubs, within a context of climate change that brings higher temperatures, lower humidity, and stronger winds. Furthermore, this biomass is now located closer to, and even surrounding, properties and infrastructure, including towns, residential areas, campsites, industrial parks, etc.
This situation makes it easier for forest fires to evolve unexpectedly and rapidly into fires of very high intensity and speed of spread that are extremely dangerous for the forest and its biodiversity, and also for material goods and, above all, people.
Why is the landscape changing?
Forty years ago, the socio-economic change that began after the Second World War accelerated, leading Europe to a global urbanization that has depopulated part of its rural areas and homogenized the habits, attitudes, and values of the inhabitants of cities and towns.
This globally urbanized society has ended up identifying the rural environment with the natural environment, requiring new functions from it that are different from those traditionally considered rural; thus, now, an idealized continuous wooded landscape is valued where the recreational use of parks and green areas of the city is maintained instead of the agroforestry mosaic that produces food, wood and other raw materials.
This mosaic of activities also served a safety function for the populations and natural values against fires due to the discontinuities in biofuel load that it created in the landscape and that limited the intensity and speed of fire spread.
A particular case: the urban-forest interface no longer guarantees the safety of towns, but has become a risk
For a while now at least 30 years Experts are warning of the danger of the expansion of the zone where forest land comes into contact with built-up areas, the so-called urban-forest interface, because it is one of the factors that most increases the vulnerability of the territory, property, and people to forest fires.
In the past, farmers and ranchers maintained a safety zone around towns through their activities, but with socio-economic change this zone has narrowed to the point of disappearing, becoming populated by dense scrubland and woodland due to a lack of management.
Given that agricultural activity around many towns continues to decline, municipalities face the need to maintain the interface and reduce the fuel load that accumulates there in order to reduce the risk and impact of a fire on urban land and ensure the safety of their property and inhabitants, with the cost that this entails.
Prevention against extinction
Experts have been warning for some time, and especially in recent years, that The actual behavior of forest fires is changing drastically compared to predictive models. More frequently, and even in small fires, convection phenomena are observed that generate changes in the atmosphere leading to "firestorms" capable of rapidly spreading new ignition points over great distances, so that the fire "jumps" distances of hundreds of meters, far beyond the safety zones of tens of meters recommended in self-protection plans for inhabited areas or for firebreaks in the mountains, and can even ignore a mosaic landscape.
In Spain, these fires, called sixth generation fires, are only 1.2% in number, but are responsible for about 90% of the burned area.
In Greece, Megafires have burned more than 4.2 million hectares in the last 21 years, including the largest recorded by the Copernicus system in Europe in recent years. These fires ravaged more than 72,000 hectares in the Greek city of Alexandroupoli in August 2023, with devastating social and environmental impacts.
Most forestry technicians and firefighters agree on the need to carry out interventions Preventive forestry to reduce fuel load and contain fire intensity to prevent them from becoming the dreaded large-scale or sixth-generation wildfires. These extremely intense fires, which spread at an enormous rate, have devastating consequences because they are completely beyond the capacity of even the best firefighting teams in the world to extinguish them.
Given the evidence that these types of fires are on the rise, forest fire experts are calling for better land management, rather than more firefighting resources, from the relevant authorities, urging them to stop playing Russian roulette every season.
The objective of preventive forestry is to keep the biofuel load below 10 tons per hectare in the highest risk areas to ensure that a fire, should it occur, can be tackled with guarantees of success and safety by the firefighting teams.
The opportunity to valorize biomass to fight fires and obtain other benefits
Keeping biomass under control in rural areas that continue to lose people interested in continuing traditional farming is complicated and expensive. However, the energy valorization of biomass and other activities linked to the bioeconomy can turn this threat into an opportunity for:
- To reduce the risk of large forest fires and their effects on biodiversity and the safety of people and property.
- Reduce energy bills and dependence on imported fossil fuels by replacing them with local biomass in boilers or heat networks.
- Reducing emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere by replacing fossil fuels and because it reduces the likelihood of a large forest fire.
- To fully or at least partially finance preventive silviculture interventions to protect forests and people.
The sustainability of energy recovery from biomass is being carefully assessed by the Renewable Energy Directive (RED-II/III) and its national transpositions, and verified on the ground thanks to certifying bodies such as SURE (Sustainable Resources Verification Scheme). AVEBIOM It is the national support organization in Spain.
Sources
2023 Queensland Government Official Guidelines on Fire Behavior Prediction: https://parks.des.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/153082/pbg-assess-pocket.pdf
2023, Southern Cape Fire Association: https://www.scfpa.co.za/index.php?comp=content&id=7
2023, Government of Aragon (Spain), Official Forum of Experts «Addressing the challenges of forest fires and impacts on the territory”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM9U7e_mm9M&t=5038s