ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. For. Glob. Change
Sec. Fire and Forests
Evaluation and optimization of a prescribed burning strategy for reducing fire hazard in a mountainous area of Portugal
1. Escola de Enxeñaría Forestal, University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain
2. Universidade de Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro Centro de Investigacao e de Tecnologias Agro-Ambientais e Biologicas, Vila Real, Portugal
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Abstract
Large wildfires with extreme behaviour are increasingly frequent, causing significant environmental and social losses worldwide. Prescribed burning (Rx) is a crucial tool to mitigate these impacts. Although in some regions, as Portugal, Rx activity is relatively high, treatment effort falls short of targets. Therefore, optimizing the spatial allocation of Rx is essential to mitigate wildfire hazard. This study evaluates the hazard-reduction effect of a shrubland Rx program in a mountainous area of Portugal. Fire hazard indicators, including burned area, fireline intensity, burn probability and flame length, are compared between business-as-usual (BAU), Rx allocation and optimized scenarios obtained using the FlamMap software treatment optimization tool. Two scenarios were tested: Rx limited to shrubland and Rx applied to both shrubland and pine stands. Additionally, two ignition distribution strategies were considered for optimization: historical large fires and systematic landscape-wide ignition patterns. Results show that optimization reduced wildfire hazard indicators relative to BAU: burned area is reduced up to -26%, fireline intensity up to -22%, burn probability up to -13%, and area with uncontrollable flame lengths up to -1.7%. Therefore, the current BAU strategy has room for improvement. Optimization performed better when using systematic ignition patterns rather than historical fire locations and extending Rx to pine stands further enhanced hazard reduction. Allocating treatments to slopes steeper than in BAU also improved outcomes. Overall, this study highlights the need for locally tailored optimization strategies to enhance the effectiveness and impact of Rx programs.
Summary
Keywords
Fire hazard, forests, Prescribed burning, Spatial optimization, wildfires
Received
07 January 2026
Accepted
02 April 2026
Copyright
© 2026 Alonso and Fernandes. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Laura Alonso
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.