RT Journal Article
T1 Unveiling the effects of landscape–fire interactions on functional diversity in a Southern European mountain
A1 Campos, João C.
A1 Albuquerque, Beatriz
A1 Civantos Calzada, Emilio
A1 Honrado, João P.
A1 Regos, Adrián
AB Climate and land-use changes are contributing to impacts on global ecosystem functioning. These effects are particularly severe in areas undergoing land abandonment and extreme wildfire events, such as the Mediterranean regions of the Iberian Peninsula. Previous studies have evaluated the impacts of land management on fire mitigation and biodiversity (species distribution and species richness), but how such strategies influence functional diversity remains unexplored. This study investigates how alternative land-fire management strategies may affect functional diversity. We modeled for 2050 for the Transboundary Biosphere Reserve Gerês-Xurés (Portugal-Spain). Land-use scenarios simulated processes of land abandonment (“business-as-usual”—BAU) and the implementation of EU rural policies (“high nature value farmlands”—HNVf), and were combined with three fire suppression levels. Species distribution models (102 vertebrates) were projected to each scenario, and functional diversity indices were consequently calculated. The highest functional richness was predicted for BAU scenarios, probably representing the benefits to unique species that deliver singular functions. The HNVf scenarios provided the highest functional divergence, probably indicating a high niche differentiation and low resource competition amongst agricultural communities. HNVf was the most beneficial scenario for ecosystem functioning, while fire suppression did not affect functional diversity. Despite the proneness to burn of our study area and the effects of firefighting on its fire regime, land-use policies are expected to have greater influence than fire suppression effects on functional diversity. These findings suggest that different facets of functional diversity will be unevenly influenced by fire–landscape dynamics driven by the land-use policies to be implemented in the upcoming decades.
PB Wiley / The Ecological Society of America.
SN 1051-0761
YR 2024
FD 2024
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/118385
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/118385
LA eng
NO Campos, João C., Beatriz Albuquerque, Emilio Civantos, João P. Honrado, and Adrián Regos. 2025. “ Unveiling the Effects of Landscape–Fire Interactions on Functional Diversity in a Southern European Mountain.” Ecological Applications 35(1): e3059. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.3059
NO This research was supported by Portuguese national funds through FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., under the FirESmart project (PCIF/MOG/0083/2017), and by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, under the RESFIRE project (PID2023-152690OA-C22). Adrián Regos was supported by IACOBUS program (INTERREG V-A España–Portugal, POCTEP 2014-2020) and is currently funded by ‘Juan de la Cierva' and ‘Ramon y Cajal' fellowship programs of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (IJC2019-041033-I; and RYC2022-036822-I). Emilio Civantos was supported by the FCT through a Postdoctoral Grant (SFRH/BPD/109182/2015). We acknowledge support of the publication fee by the CSIC Open Access Publication Support Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI).
NO Fundação para a Ciência e a tecnologia (Portugal)
NO Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España)
NO European Commission
NO Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (España)
DS Docta Complutense
RD 7 abr 2025