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Integrating fire into land management is crucial in fire-prone regions. To evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of prescribed fire (PF), we employed the REMAINS model in NW Iberia's Transboundary Biosphere Reserve Gerês-Xurés. We tested three levels of prescribed fire treatment effort for shrubland and grassland, employing three spatial allocation strategies: random distribution, prioritization in high-wildfire-risk zones, and creating fuel breaks by utilizing the existing road network. These approaches were assessed in isolation and in combination with three land-use scenarios: Business-as-usual (representing rural abandonment trends), High Nature Value farmland (reversing farmland abandonment), and Fire-Smart forest management (promoting fire-resistant landscapes). Our results confirm that PF is effective in reducing future wildfires (reductions up to 36%), with leverage values ranging from 0.07 to 0.45. Strategic spatial allocation, targeting wildfire-risk areas and existing road networks, is essential for maximizing prescribed fire's efficiency (leverage effort of 0.32 and 0.45; i.e., approximately 3 ha of PF decrease subsequent wildfire by 1 ha). However, the PF treatments yield the best efficiency when integrated into land-use policies promoting 'fire-smart' landscapes (reaching leverage values of up to 1.78 under policies promoting 'HNVf and 'fire-smart' forest conversion). These recommendations strengthen wildfire prevention and enhance landscape resilience in fire-prone regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social‐ecological memory (SEM) may be a key source of resilience in social‐ecological systems (SES), allowing for renewal and reorganisation after disturbances. This study provides an overview of the genesis and evolution of the SEM concept, its research trends and gaps, and its potential applicability to geographical thought. Combining systematic review and bibliometric analysis, we collected 219 records published in the last two decades, which were reduced to 87 relevant records after applying the inclusion/exclusion criterion. The results indicate that interest in SEM research is growing, but wide acceptance and concordance around terminology are still lagging. The concept has substantially evolved and expanded over the last decade but remains mostly abstract and conceptual. Research has focused predominantly on European countries, rural contexts, and westernised societies, identified multiple disturbances and ecosystem services as driving the maintenance and evolution of SEM, and highlighted an unequal interest between social and ecological memory carriers. Our review underlines the strong pertinence of the SEM concept for the study and management of social‐ecological systems, which would benefit from the development of application strategies and tools. In the future, researchers should seek to expand the idea of social‐ecological memory into an applied field having clearer links and boundaries with more established concepts important in geography, among them traditional ecological knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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., (© 2024 The Author(s). Ecological Applications published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America.)