Estimating the Trade-Offs between Wildfires and Carbon Stocks across Landscape Types to Inform Nature-Based Solutions in Mediterranean Regions

Abstract

Climate and land-use changes have been contributing to the increase in the occurrence of extreme wildfires, shifting fire regimes and driving desertification, particularly in Mediterranean-climate regions. However, few studies have researched the influence of land use/cover on fire regimes and carbon storage at the broad national scale. To address this gap, we used spatially explicit data from annual burned areas in mainland Portugal to build a typology of fire regimes based on the accumulated burned area and its temporal concentration (Gini Index) between 1984 and 2019. This typology was then combined with carbon stock data and different landscapes to explore relationships between landscape types and two important ecosystem services: wildfire reduction and carbon stock. Multivariate analyses were performed on these data and the results revealed a strong relationship between landscapes dominated by maritime pine and eucalypt plantations and highly hazardous fire regimes, which in turn hold the highest carbon stocks. Shrubland and mixed landscapes were associated with low carbon stocks and less hazardous fire regimes. Specialized agricultural landscapes, as well as mixed native forests and mixed agroforestry landscapes, were the least associated with wildfires. In the case of agricultural landscapes, however, this good wildfire performance is achieved at the cost of the poorest carbon stock, whereas native forests and agroforestry landscapes strike the best trade-off between carbon stock and fire regime. Our findings support how nature-based solutions promoting wildfire mitigation and carbon stock ecosystem services may prevent and revert land degradation harming Mediterranean regions.