Wildfires impact on ecosystem service delivery in fire-prone maritime pine-dominated forests

Alterations generated by intensified wildfire regimes are leading to unprecedented impacts in the supply of ecosystem services (ES). We investigated how a large wildfire affected the components of ES delivery (capacity, flow, and demand) in a fire-prone landscape. We selected a set of socio-ecologically and economically important provisioning ES and analysed temporal trends in and mismatches between ES flow and demand indicators over three spatial scales. Serotinous pine forests were the principal service providing units (SPUs) contributing to ES supply before fire. Fire interrupted their ES capacity, correspondingly reducing the ES flow of wood production, hunting, livestock, and mushroom harvesting for several years. Actual fire-driven losses in wood production were masked by the immediate removal and selling of the burned trees. We detected two new opportunities of ES delivery emerge as a result of post-fire natural vegetation dynamics that last until today: honey and resin collection. Finally, there were no spatial mismatches between ES flow and demand over time due to wildfire occurrence. These findings highlighted the need to promote the post-fire recovery of key SPUs, and identify new unforeseen opportunities of ES supply created by fire and by the natural post-fire dynamics of the vegetation, to, at least partially, reverse the losses.

Automated summary

The intensification of wildfire regimes has unprecedented impacts on ecosystem services supply. A study on a large wildfire in a fire-prone landscape revealed interruption of ecosystem services delivery capacity, flow, and demand indicators. While the fire caused temporary reductions in wood production, hunting, livestock, and mushroom harvesting services, it also created new opportunities for honey and resin collection through post-fire natural vegetation dynamics. This study emphasizes the importance of promoting post-fire recovery of key service providing units and identifying unforeseen opportunities for ecosystem services supply.