Can trees resist wildfires?

Spanish researchers Bernabé and José Moya couldn't trust their eyes. More than 20,000 hectares of backwoods were roasted. Be that as it may, amidst the annihilation, a gathering of cypresses was all the while standing tall and green. At the point when a flame cleared through an exploratory plot in Andilla, in the Spanish area of Valencia in 2012, it gave analysts the ideal open door. The plot, which was a piece of CypFire, an undertaking financed by the European Union, was built up amid the 1980s to test the resistance of more than 50 mixed bags of Mediterranean cypress to a pathogenic growth. After the flame occasion of 2012, it additionally gave further narrative confirmation of the impossible to miss versatility of the species even with flame. 

Botanist Bernabé Moya and his sibling, ecological specialist Jose 

Moya, both from the branch of amazing trees in Valencia, had been included in the venture for quite a long while. "On our approach to what we knew would be a Dante-esque scene amid that terrible summer, we felt profound misery at the considered losing a plot of such esteem to the protection of biodiversity," Bernabé Moya told BBC Mundo. In any case, we had trust that maybe a percentage of the cypresses had survived.When we arrived we saw that all the regular oaks, holm oaks, pines and junipers had totally blazed. In any case, just 1,27% of the Mediterranean cypresses had touched off." 

The flame in Valencia prompted a three-year universal study to discover the explanations for the strength of the species and find on the off chance that it could give cradle zones to block or keep the quick spread of rapidly spreading fires. Human-impelled flames speak to a standout amongst the most incessant reasons for woodland corruption in the Mediterranean district. More than 269.000 flames were accounted for in the district somewhere around 2006 and 2010 with more than two million hectares of woods area smoldered, by UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The study was distributed in the current month's issue of the Journal of Environmental ManageThe lab tests were performed by scientists from the Forest Fire Laboratory at INIA-CIFOR in Spain, and the Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection in Florence (IPSP), Italy.

"In the past, this species was not studied in depth or only a few parameters were measured," explained Gianni Della Rocca, research technologist at IPSP. "Furthermore, using different techniques the results of flammability tests in vegetation can be different or even contradictory." A crucial difference of the new tests is that they were performed not only on dead dry samples but also on live fine twigs with leaves taken from different crown heights, which revealed one of the key traits of the species: its high water content.

"We observed that the Mediterranean cypress, because of the particular structure of its leaves, is able to maintain a high water content even in situations of extreme heat and drought, and this is a very favourable starting point concerning fire risk," explains Mr Della Rocca. "The cuticle is thick and the stomata are arranged on the inside and protected side of the scale-like leaves and therefore less subject to high water loss". Moya says that "ignition time of live parts of the Mediterranean cypress is between one, five and seven times that of other Mediterranean species like Quercus ilex,Juniperus communis or Pinus pinaster under the experimental conditions of our tests".

The litter on the forest floor, made up of small fragments of leaves, also forms an intricate and compact layer and is slow to decompose.

"The thick and dense litter layer acts as a 'sponge' and retains water, and the space for air circulation is reduced", says Della Rocca.Could the Mediterranean cypress help combat wildfires in other parts of the world, like California or the Patagonia in Chile and Argentina. According to Bernabé Moya, the species has a "great plasticity in terms of soil, climate and altitude. It can grow on all soils, even degraded ones, apart from those that are water-logged, and it thrives from sea level to altitudes of more than 2,000 metres". The species has been introduced in Latin America, says Mr Moya, and could grow without problems in the temperate climate of California, Chile or Argentina.

"The first thing would be to study the adaptability of different varieties of Mediterranean cypress to local conditions and establish experimental plots," he explains.

One of the main conclusions of the European study, according to Mr Rocca, is that peculiar plantations with selected varieties of cypress seem a possible alternative new tool to counteract the risk of wildfires in some sensitive sites like wild-urban-interfaces or wild-industrial-interfaces.

"Our study has led to the introduction of Cupressus sempervirens var. horizontalisinto a special list of tree species eligible for interventions against forest fires in a Regional Law of Tuscany," he explains. In Valencia, Bernabé Moya and his colleagues will plant the first barriers of the Cypress system in the autumn, using specially selected varieties of Mediterranean cypress.

For Mr Moya, "the vulnerability of vegetation to fires is linked to the lack of information available to the public, the lack of support for research and the lack of plans for the sustainable management of forests - a situation that will get worse with climate change". For the Spanish scientist, many problems like desertification, wildfires, soil degradation and loss of biodiversity could be reverted if there was more tree planting and if people took more care of forests in the first place.