Wildfires may produce ecosystem damages that
would require post-fire mitigation and/or restoration actions.
The question is what are the criteria to identify those burned
areas that show high degradation risk in order to plan and
prioritise restoration projects. To address that question it is
necessary to start with the analysis of fire impact, and from
that analysis to derive predictive tools for assessing the
fragility and regeneration capacity of burned ecosystems.
The identification of post-fire degradation mechanisms
provides the basis for developing the corresponding specific
mitigation/restoration actions. The diagnostic of ecological
impact of wildfires together with the established forest
management objectives allow deriving mitigation/restoration
strategies and the subsequent implementation projects.
We present our experience on the evaluation of post-fire
ecosystem vulnerability and on the assessment of
restoration planning derived from recent and ongoing EC
research projects. This includes the development of shortterm
restoration techniques suited for degraded soils and
dry Mediterranean conditions, where fire-induced
degradation is complicated with water shortage for
regenerating vegetation