REMAINS is a spatially explicit process-based model that integrates the main factors driving fire-landscape dynamics in Southern European mountain landscapes.
REMAINS model includes fire-vegetation dynamics, fire management through different fire-suppression strategies, and land-cover changes (namely, forest plantations, agricultural conversion, and rural abandonment). It allows investigating how the spatio-temporal interactions between these processes affect fire regime and thereby landscape composition and dynamics at short- and medium-timescales.
It is currently initialized and calibrated for the Geres-Xures Transboundary Biosphere Reserve (Portugal/Spain).
Each model scenario dictates which ecological and anthropogenic processes are active. The processes that are currently included are:
- Land-cover changes
- Wildfires and fire suppression
- Prescribed fire
- Forest recover
- Post-fire regeneration
- Afforestation
- Vegetation encroachment
Thus, the current version of the model is implemented thought the following functions:
afforestation: simulates the colonization of shrublands by oak and pine species, occurs at a certain annual rate, only can take place after a period since the last land-cover transformation and depends on the percentage of oak and/or pine forest found in a circular neighborhood.
default.params: initializes the parameters and the global variables of the model.
encroachment: the vegetation encroachment is the transformation of rocky areas or open shrublands to close shrublands.
fire.risk: simulates the fire risk areas as a function of various methodological parameters.
forest.recover: simulates the forest recovery (pine and oak) after fire (wildfire and prescribed fire) under a given period.
interface: assignment of the type of neighbourhood to each raster cell.
land.cover.change: simulates land-cover transitions (e.g. rural abandonment or forest conversion) following a demand allocation approach.
land.dyn.mdl: loads the spatial state variables, the initialization of model´s parameters, creates the scenario output sub-folder and schedules the processes, e.g., land-cover changes, wildfires, prescribed fire, vegetation dynamics.
postfire.rege: simulates forest regeneration after fire.
prescribed.burn: simulates the use of prescribed fire according to spatial and temporal criteria.
wildfires: simulates spatially explicit wildfires and fire suppression.
Users can download and install the latest stable version of the REMAINS package from GitHub as follows (required package devtools should be installed/updated first):
devtools::install_github("FirESmart-Project/REMAINS")
Additionally, users can have help to run package functions directly as package vignettes, by forcing their inclusion in installation:
devtools::install_github("FirESmart-Project/REMAINS",
build_manual = TRUE,
build_vignettes = TRUE)
Call the function \code{land.dyn.mdl} to run the REMAINS model.
# Clean local enviornment
rm(list = ls())
# Scenario name
scenName = "remains_test"
scenDir = paste0("outputs/", scenName)
# Model's parameters
params = default.params()
params$time.horizon = 10
lcc.demand = data.frame(SmartPlant = round(runif(50, 1, 10)),
AgriConver = round(runif(50, 1, 10)),
RuralAbnd = round(runif(50, 1, 10)))
# Run the model
res = land.dyn.mdl(scenDir = scenDir, is.land.cover.change = TRUE, is.wildfire = TRUE,
is.prescribed.burn = TRUE, is.postfire.rege = TRUE, is.forest.recover = TRUE,
is.afforestation = TRUE, is.encroachment = TRUE, nrun = 1, save.land = FALSE,
params = params, lcc.demand = lcc.demand)
# Visualize outputs
names(res)
res$land
res$oak.age
res$pine.age
res$unburnt.land
res$unburnt.oak.age
res$unburnt.pine.age
res$lcc
res$afforest
res$encroach
Pais, S., Aquilué, N., Brotons, L., Honrado, J. P., Frenandes, P., Regos, A. The REMAINS R-package: Paving the Way for Fire-Landscape Modeling and Management (in prep.)
Pais, S., Aquilué, N., Campos, J., Sil, Â., Marcos, B., Martínez-Freiría, F., Domínguez J., Brotons, L., Honrado, J. P., Regos, A. 2020. Mountain farmland protection and fire-smart management jointly reduce fire hazard and enhance biodiversity and carbon sequestration. Ecosystem Services, 44, 101143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2020.101143
Campos, J. C., Bernhardt, J., Aquilué, N., Brotons, L., Domínguez J., Lomba, Â., Marcos, B., Martínez-Freiría, F., Moreira, F., Pais, S., Honrado, J. P., Regos, A. 2021. Using fire to enhance rewilding when agricultural policies fail. Science of the Total Environment, 755, 142897. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142897