Anthropogenic land-use legacies underpin climate change-related risks to forest ecosystems.

Forest ecosystems with long-lasting human imprints can emerge worldwide as outcomes of land-use cessation. However, the interaction of these anthropogenic legacies with climate change impacts on forests is not well understood. Here, we set out how anthropogenic land-use legacies that persist in forest properties, following alterations in forest distribution, structure, and composition, can interact with climate change stressors. We propose a risk-based framework to identify anthropogenic legacies of land uses in forest ecosystems and quantify the impact of their interaction with climate-related stress on forest responses. Considering anthropogenic land-use legacies alongside environmental drivers of forest ecosystem dynamics will improve our predictive capacity of climate-related risks to forests and our ability to promote ecosystem resilience to climate change.

Conflicting Frames about Ownership and Land Use Drive Wildfire Ignitions in a Protected Conservation Area.

The creation of protected conservation areas may result in protracted conflicts between stakeholders. In this study we examine the drivers of anthropogenic wildfire ignitions in the National Park of "los Alerces" (NPA) in Patagonia, Argentina. The NPA was established in 1937 to protect the native "andino-patagónico" forests from wildfires as well as preserving its scenic beauty and native flora and fauna. At the time of its creation state authorities prohibited all extractive human activities in the "intangible"-fully protected-"National Park" section, while other regulated extractive and ecotourism activities were allowed to continue in the "Natural Reserve" section in an effort to accommodate the historical entitlements of the displaced populations of "pobladores" (settlers) that had been living in the NPA for over a century. Here we interviewed the main stakeholder groups-"pobladores", forest rangers and administrators, ecolodge owners and angler club members-to identify the drivers of wildfire ignitions in the park. Wildfires have been singled out by state authorities as the main threat to the NPA though considerable scientific uncertainty exists regarding their complex ecological effects. This study argues, based on the human and biophysical system data collected, that two conflicting cultural frames exist within the NPA that provide the necessary backdrop for understanding the drivers of wildfire ignitions. In turn, these findings raise puzzling dilemmas for the main theoretical approaches that have been used to inform and design conflict management strategies in protected conservation areas.

Traditional fire use impact in the aboveground carbon stock of the chestnut forests of Central Spain and its implications for prescribed burning.

Chestnut forest ecosystems have a complex fire ecology; a result of centuries of co-evolution with pre-industrial era, cultural fire use by local communities based on Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). As the "forest transition" unfolds throughout Europe however, and the traditional role of chestnut forest ecosystems as producers of edible nuts and firewood declines, chestnut forest resilience may be endangered due to disturbance regime changes driven by transformations in land use linked to the rural exodus, state fire exclusion policies and climate change. In this study we compared the aboveground carbon stocks of two chestnut forests located in Central Spain which can be considered representative of divergent Europe-wide management trends. In the first site of Casillas traditional understory burning is still widespread and its impacts on forest stand structure can be characterized as maintaining "open canopy", low density stands dominated by old growth chestnut trees. In the second site of Rozas de Puerto Real traditional fire use has declined and natural ecological succession processes have resumed resulting in high density, "closed canopy" stands dominated by young chestnut tree saplings and increasing pine, oak and shrub encroachment. For both sites we used in-the-field monitoring methods to estimate aerial carbon stock using allometric equations. Our results suggest that carbon sequestration and species richness is greater in the traditionally managed chestnut forest stands. Since present demographic trends present difficulties for the maintenance of traditional fire use by local communities, we argue that future fire management of unmanaged chestnut stands and maintenance of traditional forest stands ought to be implemented through surrogate prescribed burning plans that replicate the seasonal timing and ecological effects of TEK based controlled burning.