O ordenamento do território e a prevenção dos incêndios rurais. Caso de estudo: Mirandela

Mestrado em Arquitectura Paisagista - Instituto Superior de AgronomiaLarge forest fires have spread at an unprecedented rate in Portugal during the last decades and many are the causes attributed to this growing scourge. There is a climatic pattern of annual wetting and drying, overlain by episodic drought that ensures there is always something to burn. Simultaneously we are witnessing the abandonment of rural areas and the collapse of traditional societies which, through its practices, avoiding the accumulation of large masses of fuel in the forests and ensured a constant surveillance of space. Moreover, the rural area has been subject to significant changes in terms of occupation and land use and spatial organization. Witness the conversion of traditional agro-silvo-pastoral mosaic that structured and compartmentalized the rural areas in dense and continuous monospecific forests, consisting of highly flammable species such as pine and eucalyptus. After the waves of fire that devastated Portugal in recent decades, forest policy has reacted compulsively emphasizing combat instead of prevention planning. With the size that the fires have affected, the actions of extinguishing the fire proves to be ineffective and the means to fight it cannot do more than save the homeowners who are at risk. These changes justify the need for measures at the level of organization of space, to prevent the outbreak and spread of fires. At the level of planning is necessary to define a discontinuous landscape mosaic, based on the traditional system of land use, where large forested areas, particularly large patches of monospecific forests, are interrupted by areas of clearing, in order to create barriers to spread of fires. The landscape must become a mosaic of different land uses, which differ in the occupation according to the ecological situation in which they are, in order to promote discontinuities where the fuels are subject to management. The maintenance of these discontinuities in the landscape depends heavily on agents and users of rural landscapes therefore we must delineate attractive strategies for rural development. For these areas are maintained with low levels of fuel is necessary the existence of agricultural and silvopastoral practices, in coexistence with preventive forestry practices (Guiomar, Fernandes & Moreira, 2008). It is necessary to act on the composition of the forest with their diversification and the preferential use of species with low flammability, specifically indigenous deciduous species. Simultaneously it is necessary to bound the population clusters and manage the interface urban/forest in order to prevent the spread of infrastructure and coexistence between them and the forest patches that while are of a high aesthetic value, provide a continuous of fuel which increases the vulnerability of infrastructure and the people who inhabit them to fire. This paper presents a Land Use Proposal for Mirandela council of which aims are to make the area more resistant to the risk of outbreak and spread of fire, through the creation of discontinuities in the landscape and the replacement of species with high flammability. The elaboration of this proposal, which ensures the protection of natural resources and integrates ecological and cultural factors of landscape, is based on a methodology known as "Sistema-Paisagem" (Magalhães, 2007)