Effects of wildfires on forest soils of the Valencian Community. A review of the scientific literature

Abstract

Wildfires may produce changes in physical, chemical, and biological soil properties and increase runoff and erosion processes. The magnitude of these changes depends on several factors including the temperature reached, the duration of heating and soil type. The consequences caused by forest fires have led to an extensive bibliography generated by different research groups that have addressed this issue both in the field and under controlled laboratory conditions. This paper is a review of the scientific literature dealing with changes imposed by wildfires in physical and chemical soil properties and in the hydrological and erosive behavior of the Valencian Community forest soils. Bibliographic information was collected from Bib-Eron, a bibliographic database on soil erosion. The information included in the database is collected and maintained by the Environmental Quality and Soils Department (CIDE). The analysis was based on the scientific documents encoded in the database. The period under consideration runs from 1982 to 2022 representing a total of 123 works published in international and national journals, book chapters, books, and doctoral thesis.