Delimitation of strategic areas
6 May 2015
Preventing forest fires and minimizing their effects are critical objectives of the project. Specialised forest fire units within the Fire Department have analysed fire spread patterns and historical forest fires in Montserrat and they have determined two main scenarios concerning extreme forest fires:
- Convective forest fires that can spread from the western side of the mountain range under west wind conditions
- Topographic forest fires driven by a suction effect through the Llobregat River valley
Modelling these scenarios has allowed to design fire prevention strategic intervention areas that have afterwards been defined through field validation. These areas are used to break up forest cover continuity and maintain low fuel load structures in localised sectors as a strategy to constrain extreme fires and provide enough time to allow proper fire response.
As a result, a 4.950 ha Project Management Area (PMA) where all concrete conservation actions of the project shall be performed has been established. In detail, concrete actions in PMA should include recovery of almost 300 ha of open areas (action C1), improvement of 3.750 ha of forest habitats (action C2) and introduction of extensive livestock farming in 3.950 ha (action C3) which stands for 80% of total PMA. In the other 20% orographic conditions make livestock activity unfeasible.
PMA has been divided into three zones as a measure to guarantee that all actions could be executed on the projected time scale. Criteria followed to do so include territorial continuity, livestock viability (best kind of animals according to the characteristics of each zone) and existing synergy opportunities.
Zone 1 applies for the PMA part where the project would have been implemented even if the LIFE Programme support would have been denied. In this area several forest owners are already associated and committed to the objectives of the project and there are two farmers with cows in extensive grazing conditions that can be considered as the pilot test in which the project has been based on. Actions within Zone 1 should protect the global project area from convective extreme forest fires. To this end, some forestry works have already been executed in order to create a low flammable strip in both sides along the BP-1101 local road, being this area the one through which the extreme forest fire occurred in 1986 reached Montserrat mountain range.
Zone 2 is located in the southern part of the PMA and according to its climatic and vegetation conditions sheep and goats are considered the best livestock species to be introduced for extensive grazing. In Zone 2 there are also some members of the Associació de Propietaris Entorns de Montserrat (local forest owners Association) and some municipalities with high active participation in the project. There is also an ongoing project concerning livestock implementation as a fire prevention tool at local scale with whom synergies could be shared. Actions within Zone 2 should protect the global project area from topographic extreme forest fires such as the one occurred in Montserrat in 1994.
Zone 3 has been conceived as a complement to the others in order to give continuity to PMA. It should protect the global project area through actions in ravine confluence points to help avoiding fire expansion in case of wildfire.
- Categories:
- Preparatory
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