There isn’t a landowner in the country who does not fear wildfire.
Catastrophic wildfire is often considered a summer phenomenon, especially a long hot summer. Equally likely is spring wildfire, particularly in a dry spell, where dead grasses and foliage provide the perfect fuel load for a fire to take hold and rapidly spread.
Elsewhere we have discussed risks that are often at the root of a wildfire. While a fire may start unintentionally, a common cause is public inattention to litter or basic tidiness. As more and more people seek to find a break from the city and head out for the countryside these risks will increase.
There are mitigations to the spread of wildfire that are separate but not unrelated. The first is reducing fuel load, and the second is creating an effective fire-break.
Effective land management is essential, undertaking preventative measures to mitigate the chances of a fire spreading or being so intense as to cause fundamental damage to underlying peat.
Prescribed burning is considered a valued management tool. This is an option which creates a lot of heat, and little light on what is best for our uplands.
Cool burning, prescribed burning, muirburn, does not burn underlying peat. The carbon remnants lend to carbon capture. Over time it is also an option that offers good carbon capture through regeneration of the underlying vegetation. More specifically it dramatically reduces fuel load and is the most effective in creating a break that would slow any wildfire.
Too often discussion around upland land management is presented as an ‘either/or’. Those on the ground and those who have extensively studied [1] the issue know that this is not the case.
On deep peat, cool burning is often the only practical option. Cutting, even if using soft track vehicles, compounds the deep peat and thus reduces the health of the peat and its ability to capture carbon. There are upland areas where the ground is too steep for heavy vehicles to manoeuvre. Again, on any peatlandit is always necessary to evaluate the risk of the impact of heavy vehicles on soft ground!. Some areas are not easily accessible with wheeled vehicles.
It also matters what sort of cutting is undertaken. The most effective is a soft track with a cutter blower. The blowing aspect has two benefits. It reduces risk of debris gathering (fuel load) and spreads seeds over a wider area, particularly on a dry windy day, all of which enhances regeneration.
Regeneration is central to landscape management. It is the generational maintenance of uplands landscape that secures a haven for rare ground nesting birds, a safe space for often unique uplands flora, and provides the public with the English uplands landscape that is much loved by walkers, ramblers and day-trippers.
With popularity comes increased risk of wildfire. By creating fire breaks and reducing fuel load, whether by cool burning, cutting, or grazing, land managers assure the maintenance of a healthy and safe upland landscape: a place all can enjoy.
- 1 School of Environment and Natural Resources, The Ohio State University, Kottman Hall, 2021 Coffey Road, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
- 2 School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B31 2DX, UK
- 3 Soil Geography and Landscape Group, Wageningen University, PO Box 47, Wageningen 6700 AA,The Netherlands
- 4 NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Bush Estate, Penicuik, Edinburgh EH26 0QB, UK
- 5 Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences, University of Torino, Largo Paolo Braccini 2, Grugliasco (TO) 10095, Italy
- 6 Centro de Investigacao e de Tecnologias Agro-Ambientais e Biologicas, Universidade de Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal
- 7 School of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GP, UK
- 8 Department of Geography, Swansea University, Swansea, UK
- 9 School of Environment, Education and Development, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
- 10 Department of Biology, University of Bergen, Postboks 7803, Bergen 5020, Norway[1]