WP10.3 - Production of new training possibilities for fire professionals
To be able to decide and execute fire operations, professionals must know how to look and understand fire, because the only way of managing a forest fire is to understand and predict its changes, and also to understand the possible effects on ecosystem. Experience in large fires behavior is needed to be able to manage this high-intensity and high-speed fires. Also experience in medium and low intensity fire behavior and effects on the ecosystem is needed to be able to take decision on fire management. Every type of fire regime in Europe has particular effects in to every process and elements of the ecosystems. Using a wrong fire regime in one area can change things, like fire suppression is doing right now. If we want to apply prescribed fire or to use the wildfire to change it to a prescribed fire at the same moment, we need to know the type of fire regime each ecosystem can handle.
This requires the development of adequate training systems. In this work package the main objectives are unify training material of fire use and fire management for professionals and creating a common system for recognizing the different levels of training and expertise in fire management. Key points are in the incorporation of logical fire analysis as a part of the language to understand and explain fire. This should be common to every fire manager, to improve their efficiency in front of prescribed fires or large fires, their capacity to share experience and their security. It makes possible to anticipate fire behavior, take a decision and communicate it fastly and clearly. Prescribed fire and experimental fires would be considered as an obligate part of any training for fire professionals. The extensive practice of Prescribed Burning will be the most effective training. This not only will help to introduce controlled fire in European fire prone ecosystems, also to give everybody a chance to look at fire as a servant! Fire used as a tool needs highly trained professionals. The objective is therefore to train fire professionals, not only for every day fires, but for large fast intense fires, anticipating its behavior, its changes and its opportunities and pre-plan our actions. Different kinds of fire use are associated to different levels of training. Fire use must always be linked with a deep common knowledge.
In Agentina (CIEFAP and INTA), South Africa (SFS) and Russia/Mongolia (PFF), this programme will be an automatic outflow of the work done under WP10.2, and can be regarded as providing the “bridge” between providing the academic and professional communities involved with guidelines for prescribed burning application and Integrated Fire Protection (IFP) Planning, and the practical application of these techniques. The contents of this material will include aspects such as the planning, application and assessment of prescribed burning application as well as the implementation of Integrated Fire Protection plans, including the application at a regional scale, evaluation procedures and application recommendation, which will include integration of prescribed burning, ecological requirements and forestry silvicultural regimes within the context of timber production constrains.