SSS
Soil System Sciences

Special issue on geo-environmental effects of wildfires

When fire runs. Credit: A. Jordán. Click to see the original picture and data at Imaggeo.

Noemí Lana-Renault Monreal
noemi-solange.lana-renault@unirioja.es
University of La Rioja, Spain

We are glad to announce that the Special Issue on “Geo-environmental effects of wildfires”, which has been recently published by Cuadernos de Investigación Geográfica (volume 40 (2), 2014). This Special Issue aims at bringing together the key impacts of wildfires on runoff, soil properties and erosion, and plant biomass changes.

Cuadernos de Investigación Geográfica

Cuadernos de Investigación Geográfica

Some contributions to this Special Issue include field measurements and lab experiments. Keesstra et al. (2014), investigated in the lab the fire effects on a Redzina soil and suggested that water repellency and protection by ash were factors to consider in assessing the erosion susceptibility of a burnt forest soil; Velasco & Úbeda (2014) analyzed soil aggregate stability after a forest fire that occurred in 1994, and Moya et al. (2014), studied the post fire forest management in relation to biomass recovery and carbon stock on burnt areas. Other contributions to this Special Issue synthesized the state-of-the-art in several related topics, especially the effect of fire on soil properties (Zavala et al., 2014), soil erodibility in Galicia (Benito et al., 2014), soil organic matter (de la Rosa et al., 2014) and soil erosion and runoff in Portugal (Prats et al., 2014). Additionally, the contribution by Herrera & Chuvieco (2014) highlights the importance of estimating fuel moisture content by hyperspectral measurements for fire risk assessment. The last contribution of this Special Issue (Domíneguez et al., 2014) assesses media coverage of wildfires and critically discusses the lack of scientific communication about the nature of wildfires in Mediterranean ecosystems.
All the articles are freely accessible here (see the table of contents below).

About the journal

Cuadernos de Investigación Geográfica is issued twice a year and includes original research and review papers on all aspects of physical geography and environmental sciences. All papers are subject to full peer review. This journal has been in publication uninterruptedly since 1975. It is indexed in Scopus since 2009.

Editors of the Special Issue

Artemi Cerdá, Universitat de Valéncia
José Arnáez Vadillo, Universidad de La Rioja
Noemí Lana-Renault, Universidad de La Rioja
José M. García-Ruiz, Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología (CSIC)

Table of contents

Antonio Jordán is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Seville and coordinator of the MED Soil Research Group. Antonio’s research focusses on rainfall-induced soil erosion processes, the effects of wildfires on soil properties and soil degradation in Mediterranean areas. He is an active members of the Soil System Sciences (SSS) Division of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), which coordinates the scientific programme on soil sciences.