Castellnou and Miralles (2009) further Caspase inhibitor detailed the industrial fire epoch by differentiating among five “generations of large wildfires” (Fig. 1), where a wildfire is defined
as an uncontrolled fire in an area of combustible vegetation that occurs in the countryside or a wilderness area. Both typological systems can be applied in most regions of the world. In this review paper we integrate these definitions for the first time in the long-term and recent forest fire history of the Alpine region. In fact, despite the considerable literature produced for specific areas, e.g., Conedera et al. (2004a), Carcaillet et al. (2009), Favilli et al. (2010), Colombaroli et al. (2013), no synthesis on historical, present and future fire regimes so far exists for the European Alpine region. The proposed approach additionally allows to insert the analyzed fire history in a more global context of ongoing changes as experienced also by other regions
of the world. To this purpose, the impact of the evolution of human fire uses, and fire suppression policies, on the fire regime and on the value of ecosystem services is presented; the potential influence of present and future fire management strategies on the cultural landscape maintenance, post-management forest ecosystems evolution, and the general landscape and habitat diversity is discussed. Looking at common traits in the worldwide fire regime trajectories, Pyne Entinostat (2001) identified three main fire epochs consisting of a pre-human phase driven by natural fire regimes, a successive phase dominated by land-use related anthropogenic fires, and a third phase resulting from the rise of industrial technology and the progressive banning of the use of fire in land management (Fig. learn more 1): – First fire epoch: when the human population was too scarce and scattered to have a significant impact
on the fire regime and ignition sources were mostly natural (lightning and volcanoes). In this first fire epoch, fire became an important ecological factor along with climate fluctuations, influencing the selection of species life-history traits related to fire, e.g., Johnson (1996), Keeley and Zedler (2000), Pausas and Keeley (2009), and the evolution of fire-adapted and fire dependent ecosystems, e.g., Bond et al. (2005), Keeley and Rundel (2005), Beerling and Osborne (2006). Charcoal fragments stratified in alpine lakes and soils sediments have been used as proxy of fire activity in the European Alpine region (Ravazzi et al., 2005, Tinner et al., 2006 and Favilli et al., 2010). Early evidence of relevant fires in the Alps date back to interglacial periods during the Early Pleistocene (Ravazzi et al., 2005). However, due to multiple glaciations most of the Alpine stratigraphic record was eroded. Consequently, most fire regime reconstruction date-back to the Lateglacial-Holocene transition at around 15,000 cal. yrs BC (Favilli et al., 2010 and Kaltenrieder et al., 2010).