{"id":754,"date":"2025-09-10T06:20:25","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T04:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agrotecnio.org\/els-boscos-de-pi-blanc-es-recuperen-amb-forca-despres-de-lincendi-de-la-ribera-debre-de-2019\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T12:38:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T11:38:33","slug":"aleppo-pine-forests-show-strong-recovery-after-the-2019-ribera-debre-wildfire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agrotecnio.org\/en\/aleppo-pine-forests-show-strong-recovery-after-the-2019-ribera-debre-wildfire\/","title":{"rendered":"Aleppo pine forests show strong recovery after the 2019 Ribera d\u2019Ebre wildfire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n <li aria-setsize=\"-1\"><strong><span class=\"NormalTextRun SCXW67381910 BCX0\">A new scientific study confirms the natural regeneration capacity of <\/span><span class=\"NormalTextRun SpellingErrorV2Themed SCXW67381910 BCX0\">Pinus halepensis<\/span><span class=\"NormalTextRun SCXW67381910 BCX0\">, while warning that climate change may reduce its long-term resilience.<\/span>\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\nA <a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/jvs.70062\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">new scientific study<\/a> reveals that Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis) forests in Ribera d\u2019Ebre have regenerated well after the large wildfire in La Torre de l\u2019Espanyol in 2019, which burned 5,000 hectares <span class=\"NormalTextRun SpellingErrorV2Themed SCXW58498922 BCX0\">and was one of the largest wildfires in Catalonia in the past 25 years. The research, published in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/journal\/16541103\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><i>Journal of Vegetation Science<\/i><\/a>, concludes that the natural regeneration of these Mediterranean forests depends mainly on topography and the pre-fire forest cover, and raises new questions about the effects of climate change on their resilience.\u00a0\n\nThe study was carried out within the Forest Functioning and Dynamics research group, part of the Multifunctional Forest Management program at the Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTFC), led by Llu\u00eds Coll, professor at the University of Lleida and researcher at the Joint Research Unit CTFC-AGROTECNIO. Two years after the fire, the team quantified the number of Aleppo pine seedlings and inventoried all woody species present in 72 experimental plots of 10 \u00d7 10 meters distributed within the burned perimeter. In addition, they assessed factors such as fire severity, slope orientation, and historical land uses.\u00a0\n\nThe results show that Aleppo pine regeneration is higher on north-facing slopes, on gentle terrain, and in areas where pre-fire tree density was greater. In contrast, shrub and scrubland cover \u2014 which also plays a key role in the forest\u2019s ecological recovery \u2014 is higher on south-facing slopes and is more affected by fire severity and historical land uses. This highlights that the factors explaining Aleppo pine regeneration are not the same as those conditioning the recovery of other woody species.\u00a0\n\nAccording to Mara Paneghel (PhD student under a Marie Curie Iberus Talent contract) and Judith Sol\u00e9 (master\u2019s student and responsible for the fieldwork), first authors of the article, \u201cthe results confirm the strong ability of Aleppo pine to establish after a fire, but they also show seedling densities lower than those that were historically common.\u201d This variability could be linked to the impact of climate change, with more frequent droughts and harsher conditions that hinder seedling establishment.\u00a0\n\nNevertheless, the researchers stress that in this case, regeneration has been sufficiently good to rule out, in general terms, the need for large-scale restoration actions. \u201cThe study provides useful tools for forest managers: it helps identify the areas where regeneration may be more challenging in the case of future fires, and therefore where special attention may be needed,\u201d highlights Coll.\u00a0\n\nWhile the results offer an encouraging perspective on the remarkable regenerative capacity of Mediterranean forests (and Aleppo pine in particular), they also warn that this resilience is not unlimited and that more research will be needed to understand to what extent climate change may be reducing the density and recovery capacity of these key ecosystems.\u00a0\n\nThe article is part of Paneghel\u2019s doctoral thesis and is framed within the VULNIFOR project, funded by the Spanish State Research Agency (MICINN), and the ADAPTAFOR research group (University of Lleida and JRU CTFC-AGROTECNIO).\u00a0\n\nMore information: <a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/jvs.70062\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/jvs.70062<\/a>\u00a0\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new scientific study confirms the natural regeneration capacity of Pinus halepensis, while warning that climate change may reduce its long-term resilience.\u00a0 A new scientific study reveals that Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis) forests in Ribera d\u2019Ebre have regenerated well after the large wildfire in La Torre de l\u2019Espanyol in 2019, which burned 5,000 hectares and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":755,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-noticies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrotecnio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrotecnio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrotecnio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrotecnio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrotecnio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/agrotecnio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5215,"href":"https:\/\/agrotecnio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions\/5215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrotecnio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrotecnio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrotecnio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrotecnio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}