Role in FIRE-ADAPT: co-leader of the thematic area “carbon dynamics” and co-organiser of the Italy Study Hub
Organisation: Dipartimento di Scienze Agrarie, Forestali e Alimentari, Università di Torino (UniTo)
Country: Italy
What motivated me to join FIRE-ADAPT
The opportunity to do exchanges with very interesting researchers and practitioners. Right now, several PhD students and postdocs are working with me, and this is a great opportunity for them to join the project, have experiences abroad and collaborate with other research groups. The allowance that FIRE-ADAPT provides allows them to not be worried about economic issues, so they can travel and have some budget for making training courses, so increasing their knowledge on research.
On my secondment in Spain during the activities of its Study Hub
What the objectives of my secondment were
My main goal was to join the activities of the Spain Study Hub and share the key goal of this project. With my host, the Pau Costa Foundation (PCF), I deepened their special planning approach to fuel management at the landscape scale because it’s something that we are developing in Italy and we are taking ideas from other countries. Also, we know that Catalonia, where the partner organisations of the Spain Study Hub are, and PCF have developed approaches to strategic fuel management. This is a very good opportunity to deepen this and bring this knowledge back to my land.
What the realities of fires in Italy and Spain have in common and different
Italy is a large country with a very strong gradient in fire regimes: Alpine, temperate, and Mediterranean. Certainly, there are some places in Italy that are pretty similar to Catalonia, although we are maybe on the opposite side of the Mediterranean basin. We have a different climate circulation to the one of Catalonia, but Tuscany, for example, has a pretty similar fire regime and problems related to wildland-urban interfaces in connection with very extended areas of vegetation that are flammable.
What caught my attention in Spain
It wasn´t the first time I went to Spain, and what I like about it, and particularly about Catalonia, is the fire culture. They are building knowledge and have kept going for many years creating a cultural system and sharing it with other European countries. I really like the investment that Spain is making in fire research, which is higher than in Italy and other countries.
This is me
Favourite food: pasta
Favourite film: Inception, by Christopher Nolan
Favourite singer or band: Pink Floyd
I admire: my mother
Superpower I´d like to have: be able to relax when I want.
In Italy, I’d take you to: a trip going from the Alps to the temperate and Mediterranean systems, visiting very interesting and varied mountain systems, from broadleaf and boreal forests to broadleaf beech forest, and then to Mediterranean maquis and pine forest. I would also take you from North to South looking at how our culture varies.