Supervisors info:
Δρ. Αριανούτσου Μαργαρίτα, Ομότιμη Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Βιολογίας ΕΚΠΑ (επιβλέπουσα),
Δρ. Χριστοπούλου Αναστασία, μεταδιδακτορική συνεργάτιδα Τμήμα Βιολογίας ΕΚΠΑ
Δρ. Βασιλάκης Εμμανουήλ, Αναπλ. Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Γεωλογίας και Γεωπεριβάλλοντος ΕΚΠΑ
Summary:
Ecosystem services is a concept that expresses the benefits that ecosystems provide to humans and highlights society's dependence on them and the need to protect ecosystems and the biodiversity that supports them. The concept of ecosystem services is gaining more and more importance nowadays, and there are increasing efforts to assess ecosystem services using various methods at global scale. Forest ecosystems provide valuable provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural services. Mediterranean forest ecosystems provide food, resin, timber, fuel, play a key role in soil erosion protection and carbon sequestration and host significant biodiversity. Mediterranean ecosystems are prone to fire, which has played an important role in the evolution of their species. Thermo-Mediterranean pine forests have developed mechanisms of resistance to fire, but this is not the case for mountain forest ecosystems, which have been exposed to fire less. Fire, as an ecological disturbance, affects ecosystem functions and the services associated with them. Studies at global level have shown largely negative impacts of fire, but not for all ecosystem services, and these impacts appear to be influenced by time after fire, ecosystem type and fire regime.
The present study examines the effects of fire on the ecosystem services of forest ecosystems in Greece. Being a Mediterranean country, Greece has been affected by fires of increasing intensity and frequency in recent years. After an extensive literature review, 56 papers published in the period 01.1997- 03.2024 were selected, from which information was extracted and a database was created, to answer the research question. Most papers examined regulating and maintenance services, and far fewer studied provisioning and cultural services. There was an increasing trend in the number of published papers over the years, with peak numbers in 2021 and 2010. The majority of studies reported on thermo-Mediterranean ecosystems, with Pinus halepensis being the most common tree species, and very few studies examined montane Mediterranean forests. Data analysis showed that the effects of the fire were primarily negative on provisioning and cultural services, as well as on regulating services such as control of erosion rates, regulation of the hydrologic cycle, and atmospheric composition and climate regulation. Most effects on plant diversity which contributes to life cycle maintenance were found to be positive, while positive and neutral effects were also recorded for pollination. Mixed effects were recorded for regulation of soil quality, mainly due to the different variables examined in the studies. The most pronounced negative or positive effects were recorded in the short term, in the first two years after fire, and a gradual reduction of the effects over the years was often observed. It appears that both fire frequency and burn severity negatively affect fire impacts, while restoration treatments after fire may mitigate these impacts. The spatial mapping of the results showed that the areas most affected by the fires in Greece are Eastern Attica, Evia, Western Attica and most regional units of the Peloponnese. The fires that seem to have been studied the most are the megafires of 2007 and 2021. At a time when the fire regime is being altered by anthropogenic factors such as climate change, but also the abandonment of rural areas and agriculture, which leads to a densification of forests and an increase in fuel, combined with an increase in the wildland-urban interface, the risk of catastrophic fires grows. More research is needed in this field, as understanding the effects of fire on ecosystem services will help in the better protection and management of the vulnerable ecosystems of Greece and other countries with Mediterranean-type ecosystems.
Keywords:
fire, Mediterranean forest ecosystems, ecosystem services, regulating, provisioning, cultural services, Greece
