Search Results (38)

Historical buildings are exposed to an increased risk of fire. The direct influence comes from the buildings’ structural design and the fire protection level. The fundamental principle for reducing the loss of heritage value in historical buildings due to fire is fire protection, as part of crisis management. This article focuses on selected castle buildings from Slovakia. Three castle buildings were selected based on their location in the country. All of them are currently used for museum purposes. Using an analytical form, we assessed fire hazards and fire safety measures in two parts, calculated the fire risk index, and proposed solutions. Qualitative research, which is more suitable for the issue at hand, was used to evaluate the selected objects. The main methods used in the research focused on visual assessment of the current condition of the objects and analysis of fire documentation and its comparison with currently valid legal regulations. Based on the results, we can conclude that Kežmarok Castle (part of the historical city center) has a small fire risk (fire risk index = 13 points). Trenčín Castle (situated on a rock above the city) and Stará Ľubovňa Castle (situated on a limestone hill outside the city, surrounded by forest) have an increased risk of fire (fire risk index = 50–63). Significant risk sources identified included surrounding forest areas, technical failures related to outdated electrical installations, open flames during cultural events, the concentration of highly flammable materials, and complex evacuation routes for both people and museum collections. Full article

Integrating bioenergy crops into existing agricultural systems may influence soil biodiversity, yet evidence remains limited for second-generation bioenergy crops such as energycane. This study examined the impact of energycane integration on soil arthropod communities in the Everglades Agricultural Area, Florida, compared to traditional sugarcane and sweetcorn cropping systems. Over two crop cycles (plant cane and first ratoon), soil arthropod abundance and diversity were assessed using pitfall traps. Energycane and sugarcane, both perennial crops, showed no significant differences in order richness or Shannon diversity. Similarly, when energycane was compared with sugarcane and sweetcorn (during the first sampling), it had similar arthropod abundance. However, sweetcorn remained fallow in the second and third samplings, attracting arthropods like fire ants and earwigs, particularly due to pigweed. Diversity metrics based on Hill numbers revealed a decline in the effective abundance of ground-dwelling arthropods with increasing diversity order, influenced by differences in sampling duration. Importantly, no previous studies have been found that have reported on the effects of energycane integration into the existing cropping system on soil arthropod biodiversity. These findings highlight that energycane supports biodiversity levels comparable to sugarcane cropping systems with no negative impacts on soil arthropod abundance. This study underscores the need to consider soil biodiversity impacts when evaluating sustainable bioenergy crop transitions and the potential ecological trade-offs of perennial cropping systems. Full article

The Orinoquía region of Colombia includes diverse ecosystems such as riparian forests and seasonal savannas, which play vital roles as biodiversity reservoirs. However, increased fire activity, driven by both natural and anthropogenic pressures, poses mounting threats to these ecosystems. Despite their importance, the effects of fire on faunal communities, especially in transitional habitats, are not well understood. Understanding biodiversity responses to fire across different recovery stages is essential for conservation planning. This study aimed to assess the effects of fire occurrence and recovery time on dung beetle communities as an indicator of ecosystem resilience. We analyzed taxonomic responses—including species richness, abundance, and Hill diversity indices (D₀, D₁, D₂)—as well as functional traits such as guild richness, biomass, and food relocation behavior, across riparian forest–savanna ecotones under varying fire histories. Our results indicate that recent fires (≤1 year) and high fire frequencies (4–5 events) negatively affect species diversity and abundance. Dominance by a few disturbance-tolerant species, such as Digitonthophagus gazella, was observed in burned savannas, while forest habitats supported both rare and dominant taxa. Despite taxonomic declines, functional redundancy was maintained, largely due to the prevalence of small-bodied species. However, we observed a general resilience effect in which core species contributed to postfire community reassembly. Functional redundancy was maintained, with small dung beetles dominating the biomass and guild composition. The conservation status of transitional habitats, particularly the forest–savanna ecotone, played a critical role in postfire dung beetle community restructuring. The presence of resilient assemblages highlights the importance of dung beetles in sustaining key ecosystem functions following fire events. These findings underscore the potential of dung beetles as bioindicators for postfire monitoring and emphasize the need for improved fire management strategies in sensitive ecosystems. Full article

Prescribed fires are a management strategy involving the controlled application of fire to achieve specific ecological objectives. In the pine–oak forests in west-central Mexico, we conducted an experimental low-severity prescribed fire to assess its effects on hummingbird diversity. We hypothesized that low-severity prescribed fire would enhance both taxonomic and functional diversity by modifying understory vegetation structure and increasing floral resource availability. To test this, we performed point count censuses in both low-severity prescribed fire and fire-suppressed sites where wildfire had been excluded for over 40 years. Taxonomic diversity was assessed using Hill numbers to estimate true diversity across different abundance weights, while functional diversity was evaluated through indices such as functional richness, functional evenness, and functional divergence. Our results indicated that low-severity prescribed fires did not affect overall hummingbird diversity as both low-severity prescribed fire sites and fire-suppressed sites exhibited comparable species richness. However, sites with low-severity prescribed fire and concave summits showed a significantly higher abundance of common and highly abundant species. Notably, species richness did not align with functional richness, as the fire-suppressed site exhibited the highest functional diversity. These findings suggest that hummingbird community structure is influenced by a combination of fire history, topography, vegetation structure, and floral resource availability. We recommend maintaining a heterogeneous forest matrix, incorporating patches with fire suppression, and areas subjected to prescribed fires of varying severity. This multifaceted approach enhances both taxonomic and functional biodiversity, promoting habitat heterogeneity and ensuring the persistence of diverse hummingbird assemblages in fire-prone ecosystems. Full article

China has a large number of transmission lines laid in the mountains and forests and other regions, and these transmission lines enable national strategic projects such as the west-east power transmission project. However, the occurrence of mountain fires in the corresponding areas will seriously affect these transmission projects. At the same time, these mountain fires yield fewer image samples and complex backgrounds. Based on this, this paper proposes a transmission line hill fire detection model with YOLOv11 as the basic framework, named meta-learning attention YOLO (MA-YOLO). Firstly, the feature extraction module in it is replaced with a meta-feature extraction module, and the scale of the detection head is adjusted to detect smaller-sized hill fire targets. After this, the re-weighting module learns class-specific re-weighting vectors from the support set samples and uses them to recalibrate the mapping of meta-features. To enhance the model’s ability to learn target hill fire features from complex backgrounds, adaptive feature fusion (AFF) is integrated into the feature extraction process of YOLOv11 to improve the model’s feature fusion capabilities, filter out useless information in the features, and reduce the interference of complex backgrounds in detection. The experimental results show that the accuracy of MA-YOLO is improved by 10.8% in few-shot scenarios. MA-YOLO misses fewer hill fire targets in different scenarios and is less likely to be affected by complex backgrounds. Full article

The semi-deciduous Brazilian Atlantic Forest has faced intense fragmentation, impacting Metrodorea nigra St. Hill., a fly-pollinated and autochorous tree. We investigated population structure, inbreeding, and spatial genetic structure (SGS) across adult (Adu) and juvenile (Juv) generations in three fragmented populations of M. nigra in Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil. We tested whether the magnitude of these effects could result from its mating system, seed dispersal, anthropogenic disturbances, matrix, and fragment size. Populations affected by selective logging, fire, and trail openings include M13-Rib (84 ha) and FAC-Crav (8 ha), both surrounded by sugar cane and BSQ-Rib (3 ha) in an urban matrix. We evaluated phenological events and germination rates in the BSQ-Rib fragment. We sampled leaves and amplified their DNA using ISSR (UBC 1, 2, 820, 834, 851, 858, 860, 886) and SSR (Mtn 1, 3, 13, 16, 19, 87, 95) molecular markers. Fst, PCoA, and AMOVA values suggest a lack of generational isolation, with most variance within generations. Inbreeding values were significant in all populations (Fis and Fit, p = 0.001), probably intensified by natural seed dispersal and pollinator behavior favoring geitonogamy. However, fragmentation, anthropogenic disturbances, and the surrounding matrix influenced SGS. The urban BSQ-Rib fragment recorded the highest SGS values (26 m Juv, 24 m Adu [ISSR]; 7 m Juv, 9 m Adu [SSR]), which may result in low fruit and seed production and germination rates. Despite being the largest fragment, M13-Rib shows SGS in the first distance class (19 m Juv, 24 m Adu [ISSR]; 0 m Juv, and 10 m Adu [SSR]), possibly due to selective logging and fire. FAC-Crav, a more conserved fragment, showed no SGS in adults but punctual SGS in juveniles (27 m [ISSR] and 8 m [SSR]), pointing to it as a promising source for seed collections for reforestation purposes. In summary, inbreeding in M. nigra, influenced by pollinator behavior and seed dispersal, along with fragmentation, anthropogenic disturbances, and the surrounding matrix, are critical in shaping SGS. These factors potentially impact the reproductive success of M. nigra and their long-term survival in the face of climate change. Full article

This study examined atmospheric mechanisms affecting the East Bay Hills Fire (1991) in Oakland, California, using the Advanced Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) dataset. High-resolution WRF simulations, initially at 16 km, were downscaled to 4 km and 1 km for analyzing primary and secondary circulations at synoptic and meso-α/meso-β scales, respectively, before the fire. Additionally, the interaction between the synoptic-scale and mesoscale environments was examined using backward trajectories derived from NARR data. The findings reveal that a strong pressure gradient created by a ridge over the Great Basin and a trough off the Pacific coast generated favorable meso-α conditions for the hot, dry northeasterly winds, known as “Diablo winds”, which initiated the wildfire in northern California. Mountain waves, enhanced by jet stream dynamics, contributed to sinking air on the Sierra Nevada’s western slopes. The main conclusion is that jet circulation did not directly transport warm, dry air to the fire but established a vertical atmospheric structure conducive to wave amplification and breaking and downward dry air fluxes leading to the necessary warm and dry low-level air for the fire. The hot–dry–windy (HDW) fire weather index further confirmed the highly favorable fire weather conditions. Full article

The restoration of historical landscapes is crucial for preserving the cultural heritage. This study focuses on the cemetery of the former royal Tatoi estate, a historical site severely damaged by a wildfire in 2021. The fire almost completely eradicated the vegetation on Palaeokastro hill, necessitating a comprehensive vegetation restoration strategy. This research aims to restore the natural environment and historical landscape landmarks and improve future fire protection conditions. This study emphasizes creating a firebreak zone through thinning vegetation, aiding natural regeneration, and planting new seedlings, particularly Aleppo pines and cypresses. We recommend thinning interventions to reduce tree density, which improves the health of the remaining trees and lowers the fire risk. Additionally, the restoration of historical pathways, including cypress-lined routes, is proposed to preserve the cultural landscape. This study underscores the importance of maintaining the historical integrity and enhancing the resilience of the landscape against future fires. Full article

A total of forty samples of medieval and modern glazed pottery from northern Spain were studied. Chemical and microstructural analyses of the glazes were performed by scanning electron microscopy coupled with electron dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDX), while the chemical composition of the pottery bodies and slips were determined by X-ray Fluorescence (XRF). The glazes studied come from the Santa Barbara Hill site (Tudela), the Treviño Castle site (Treviño), the Vega workshop (Burgos) and the Torrentejo village (Labastida) and correspond to transparent glazes and opaque white glazes. Transparent glazes were lead glazes with variable PbO content. Opaque white glazes were lead-tin and lead–alkaline–tin glazes. The glaze was mainly applied to a pre-fired body made of local clays, but the glazes of the Santa Barbara Hills pottery (Tudela) were applied to raw bodies. The microstructure of the interfaces indicates a single firing process for the glazed pottery from Tudela and a double firing process in the rest of the sites. Some correlation are identified between the use of specific clays to produce different glaze colours. White opaque glazes are applied to calcium-rich clays. Similarly, calcium-rich clays were used to produce dark green transparent glazes, while clays and slips aluminium–rich were used to produce light green and light honey glazes. Iron was also identified as the main colouring agent, although copper was also used. The white glazes were opacified by the addition of cassiterite and sometimes quartz and feldspar. The glazed pottery was mainly of local origin, but the identification of some non-local pottery at all sites suggests a pottery trade. Full article

Chyulu Hills, Kenya, serves as one of the region’s water towers by supplying groundwater to surrounding streams and springs in southern Kenya. In a semiarid region, this water is crucial to the survival of local people, farms, and wildlife. The Chyulu Hills is also very prone to fires, and large areas of the range burn each year during the dry season. Currently, there are no detailed fire records or burn scar maps to track the burn history. Mapping burn scars using remote sensing is a cost-effective approach to monitor fire activity over time. However, it is not clear whether spectral burn indices developed elsewhere can be directly applied here when Chyulu Hills contains mostly grassland and bushland vegetation. Additionally, burn scars are usually no longer detectable after an intervening rainy season. In this study, we calculated the Differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) and two versions of the Relative Differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (RdNBR) using Landsat Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) data to determine which index, threshold values, instrument, and Sentinel near-infrared (NIR) band work best to map burn scars in Chyulu Hills, Kenya. The results indicate that the Relative Differenced Normalized Burn Ratio from Landsat OLI had the highest accuracy for mapping burn scars while also minimizing false positives (commission error). While mapping burn scars, it became clear that adjusting the threshold value for an index resulted in tradeoffs between false positives and false negatives. While none were perfect, this is an important consideration going forward. Given the length of the Landsat archive, there is potential to expand this work to additional years. Full article

The Serravuda site on a hill near Acri, Calabria in Italy was discovered in 1970. The site presents a unique vitrified lithoid structure. Early theories speculated on its vitrification, ranging from forest fires to extraterrestrial impacts. The structure consists of vitrified Paleozoic rock fragments forming a 45-m-long wall, possibly once extending further. Analysis suggests that humans transported these fragments for construction, with subsequent partial vitrification occurring due to high temperatures from wood combustion. Thermoluminescence dating, using the innovative “Pre-bleached with Blue LEDs” protocol, indicates origins between the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, aligning with settlement periods in the region. Fading studies were conducted to correct the error in the age data due to signal loss. The scenario suggests that the vitrification of the structure may have been a consequence of human utilization of timber for construction, with combustion resulting from random events such as forest fires or lightning strikes. This description has remarkable similarities with to those proposed for Iron Age vitrified forts in Northern Europe, suggesting that Serravuda could be seen as a precursor to such forts. Moreover, this prompts intriguing inquiries into the origins and evolution of Nordic engineering techniques focused on fire utilization in construction. Full article

Hill fires have the potential to influence dissolved organic matter (DOM) in water bodies, yet fewer studies have investigated the effects of hill fires on DOM within watersheds in karst areas. In this study, we employed the three-dimensional fluorescence-parallel factor analysis (EEM-PARAFAC) method to analyze the DOM fluorescence peaks, component compositions, fluorescence indices, and sources within the water body of the Yuanteng River sub-basin, which was impacted by the hill fire, serving as our primary research focus. The results indicate the presence of three primary fluorescent fractions in the water body of the Yuanteng River: C1, resembling humic acid (fulvic acid); C2, consisting of biopolymers and microbial by-products; and C3, containing proteins such as tyrosine and tryptophan. The Yuanteng River exhibited elevated levels of humus-like substances, diminished concentrations of protein-like substances, and demonstrated higher biogenic, freshness, and humification indices compared to unaffected water samples, reflecting the impact of the hill fire. Elevated levels of exogenous humic acid-like inputs into the waters of the Yuanteng River, along with exogenous inputs of DOM, were primarily influenced by stable, high-molecular-weight organic matter. Additionally, agricultural effluent, domestic sewage, and anthropogenic activities contributed to these inputs to a lesser degree. The impacts of endogenous inputs are mainly related to the restoration of ecosystems. The occurrence of hill fires has significantly influenced the composition of dissolved organic matter in the waters of the Yuanteng River. A comprehensive analysis of the impacts of hill fires on dissolved organic matter in water bodies can serve as a valuable reference for characterizing DOM in the water bodies of the Yuanteng River. Furthermore, it can inform strategies for environmental protection, facilitate the traceability of pollutants in water bodies, and contribute to environmental and ecological restoration efforts following hill fires in the region. Full article

The objective of this study was to determine the impact of combinations of management practices on the sustainability of rangelands in different ecoregions across the Great Plains. Six study sites were selected in Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota, encompassing the Flint Hills, High Plains, and Sandhills ecoregions. Twelve rangeland management scenarios were developed from combinations of stocking density (light, moderate, heavy), grazing management (continuous, rotational), and fire regime (no burn, spring burn) along with a no-management scenario. Each scenario was simulated at each site using established computer models: Agricultural Policy/Environmental eXtender model, Integrated Farm System Model, and Impact Analysis for Planning. Additionally, human-edible nutrient conversion was computed. A sustainability index was developed to encompass the three sustainability pillars (i.e., environmental, economic, and social) into a single value. Unmanaged rangelands generally had less soil (20%), nitrogen (30%), and phosphorus (50%) losses, although this was not consistent across ecoregions, and similar or greater soil carbon deposition than grazed rangelands. There was an interaction among stocking density, grazing management, fire regime, and ecoregion for many indicators of soil health, greenhouse gas emissions, economic activity, and human-edible nutrient conversion. The scenarios with the greatest overall sustainability index value had moderate to high index values for each of the three pillars (people, planet, profit). In conclusion, the ranking of rangeland management practices based on sustainability indicators was inconsistent across ecoregions, indicating that the optimal management system to improve sustainability of rangelands is not the same for all ecoregions. Full article

Although wildfires are a common disturbance factor to the environment, some of them can cause significant environmental and socioeconomic losses, affecting ecosystems and people worldwide. The wildfire identification and assessment of their effects on damaged forest areas is of great importance for provision of effective actions on their management and preservation. Forest regrowth after a fire is a continuously evolving and dynamic process, and the accuracy assessment of different remote sensing indices for its evaluation is a complicated task. The implementation of this task cannot rely on the standard procedures. Therefore, we suggested a method involving delineation of dynamic boundaries between conditional categories within burnt forest areas by application of spectral reflectance characteristics (SRC). This study compared the performance of firmly established for fire monitoring differenced vegetation indices—Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (dNDVI) and Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) and tested the capabilities of tasseled cap-derived differenced Disturbance Index (dDI) for post-fire monitoring purposes in different forest environments (Boreal Mountain Forest (BMF), Mediterranean Mountain Forest (MMF), Mediterranean Hill Forest (MHF)). The accuracy assessment of the tree indices was performed using Very High Resolution (VHR) aerial and satellite data. The results show that dDI has an optimal performance in monitoring post-fire disturbances in more difficult-to-be-differentiated classes, whereas, for post-fire regrowth, the more appropriate is dNDVI. In the first case, dDI has an overall accuracy of 50%, whereas the accuracy of dNBR and dNDVI is barely 35% and 36%. Moreover, dDI shows better performance in 16 accuracy metrics (from 17). In the second case, dNDVI has an overall accuracy of 59%, whereas those of dNBR and dDI are 55% and 52%, and the accuracy metrics in which dNDVI shows better performance than the other two indices are 11 (from 13). Generally, the studied indices showed higher accuracy in assessment of post-fire disturbance rather than of the post-fire forest regrowth, implicitly at test areas—BMF and MMF, and contrary opposite result in the accuracy at MHF. This indicates the relation of the indices’ accuracy to the heterogeneity of the environment. Full article

In Hong Kong, as in many tropical areas, grasslands are maintained by fire on disturbed and abandoned land. However, Hong Kong’s native forests are regenerating in many areas, alongside frequent burning of the hillsides, and are in different stages of structural succession to closed canopy forest patches. Understanding the major determinants of secondary succession is a vital input to forest management policies. Given the importance of forests for biodiversity conservation, watershed protection and carbon cycling. This study examines the relationship between burning regimes and structural forest succession over 42 years from 1973 to 2015, using an archive of satellite images, aerial photographs and field plot data. Overlay of a fire frequency map with maps of forest structural classes at different dates indicates the number of fires undergone by each successional class as well as the time taken to progress from one class to another under different fire regimes. Results indicate that the native sub-tropical evergreen forests, which are naturally fire intolerant, can regenerate alongside moderate burning, and once the shrub stage is reached, succession to closed forest is relatively rapid and can occur within 13 years. More than one burn, however, is more destructive, and twice-burnt areas were seen to have only one-third of the woody biomass of once-burnt plots. The most frequent fires occurred in areas where mono-cultural plantations had been destroyed by disease in the 1960s and were subsequently invaded by grasslands. These former plantation areas remained in early successional stages of grass and open shrubland by 2015. Other plantations from the 1970s and 1980s remain as plantations today and have acted as a barrier to natural forest succession, attesting to the greater effectiveness of fire control over re-afforestation measures. Full article