Forest Wildfires in Chile: Effects on Soil Degradation and Damage Mitigation

How to cite: Matus, F.J.; Duarte, E.; Rojas, C.; Smith-Ramírez, C.; Rubilar, R.A.; Merino, C.; Aburto, F.; Jofre, I.; Stehr, A.; Nájera, F.; Dörner, J.; Morales, L. Forest Wildfires in Chile: Effects on Soil Degradation and Damage Mitigation. Preprints 2023, 2023061802. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202306.1802.v1 Matus, F.J.; Duarte, E.; Rojas, C.; Smith-Ramírez, C.; Rubilar, R.A.; Merino, C.; Aburto, F.; Jofre, I.; Stehr, A.; Nájera, F.; Dörner, J.; Morales, L. Forest Wildfires in Chile: Effects on Soil Degradation and Damage Mitigation. Preprints 2023, 2023061802. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202306.1802.v1

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MDPI and ACS Style

Matus, F.J.; Duarte, E.; Rojas, C.; Smith-Ramírez, C.; Rubilar, R.A.; Merino, C.; Aburto, F.; Jofre, I.; Stehr, A.; Nájera, F.; Dörner, J.; Morales, L. Forest Wildfires in Chile: Effects on Soil Degradation and Damage Mitigation. Preprints 2023, 2023061802. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202306.1802.v1

APA Style

Matus, F.J., Duarte, E., Rojas, C., Smith-Ramírez, C., Rubilar, R.A., Merino, C., Aburto, F., Jofre, I., Stehr, A., Nájera, F., Dörner, J., & Morales, L. (2023). Forest Wildfires in Chile: Effects on Soil Degradation and Damage Mitigation. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202306.1802.v1

Chicago/Turabian Style

Matus, F.J., José Dörner and Luis Morales. 2023 "Forest Wildfires in Chile: Effects on Soil Degradation and Damage Mitigation" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202306.1802.v1

Abstract

The 2022-2023 Chilean summer showed increased temperatures and similar burned area, compared to the 2016-2017 season, where more than 500,000 hectares were compromised, mainly in the rural areas. After a brief review, it is revealed that the effects of forest fires on soil and hydrological properties are barely debated in Chile. Here, we showed a climatological analysis where temperature records in the 2016-2017 season were unusual, as well as another unexpected increase in the summer of 2022-2023, resulting in high-severity fires known as ‘mega-fires’ or “storm-fires”. Mega-fires affect forest plantations and native forests mainly from 33º S (Maule Region) to 39º S (Los Ríos Region) and they are expected to become frequent due to climate change, moving from the north to the south. We present an overview of the influence of wildfires on soil components in the most affected areas (inland, Coastal, and Andes ranges), their hydrological impacts, and potential erosion risk due to high winter precipitation. We propose several management practices that could help to prevent or mitigate these events, including pre-and post-fire interventions, such as afforestation and seeding, selective logging, mulching, erosion barriers, soil preparation, and dam monitoring. We argue that any effective plan in fire-prone and affected areas should include a combination of actions taken at the hillslope scale at integral ecosystem management, whose effectiveness should be monitored and verified regionally at the watershed scale.

Keywords

soil erosion; fire severity; ecosystem recovery; flooding risk; Chilean mega-fires

Subject

Environmental and Earth Sciences, Soil Science

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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