Alto Minho (in northwestern Iberia) is one of the European regions most affected by fires. Many of these fires originate from rangeland management of Atlantic heathlands, and, while being illegal, often are not actively suppressed. In this study, pastoral fires (autumn-to-spring fires unrecorded by authorities), spring wildfires, and summer wildfires were independently mapped and dated from remote sensing. Alto Minho burned at a mean annual rate of 5.0% of the territory between 2001 and 2020. Pastoral burning totalled 40,788 hectares during the period, accounting for 20% of the total burnt area. Rangeland burning occurs mostly from December to April, the rainiest months that guarantee the conditions for pasture renewal and fire self-extinction. The mean fire return interval of pastoral burning is slightly higher than that of wildfires (13 years vs. 11 years), except in part of the inner mountains where it dominates fire activity. Pastoral fires are more frequent and largely prevail over wildfires in the parishes with higher livestock quantities. Conversely, the largest wildfires and higher summer burnt areas correspond with very low livestock and nearly non-existing pastoral fires. Traditional fire knowledge should not be overlooked by fire management, as it contributes to more sustainable fire regimes and ecosystems.

Fire has been a widely used tool in habitat and landscape management, mainly associated with land use dynamics of deforestation, pasture renewal, hunting and reclaiming new agriculture and rangeland areas. Ancient societies followed norms and rules regarding the used of fire. However, as these societies developed and land ownership changed, the conflicts generated by using fire triggered the need to regulate this practice by establishing the first laws. Such laws became of a broader type and narrower application over time until the twenty-first century. This research hypothesises that imposing constraints and regulations on using agro-silvopastoral fire through legislation in Portugal did not discourage its traditional use by communities. Through the historical legislative reconstruction of fire uses from before Portugal’s Foundation until 2021, it was possible to confirm the hypothesis and conclude that a paradigm change is needed by means of setting up an adequate legal framework for the different uses of fire in the land. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .

Socio-demographic changes in recent decades and fire policies centered on fire suppression have substantially diminished the ability to maintain low fuel loads at the landscape scale in marginal lands. Currently, shepherds face many barriers to the use of fire for restoring pastures in shrub-encroached communities. The restrictions imposed are based on the lack of knowledge of their impacts on the landscape. We aim to contribute to this clarification. Therefore, we used a dataset of burned areas in the Alto Minho region for seasonal and unseasonal (pastoral) fires. We conducted statistical and spatial analyses to characterize the fire regime (2001–2018), the distribution of fuel types and their dynamics, and the effects of fire on such changes. Unseasonal fires are smaller and spread in different spatial contexts. Fuel types characteristic of maritime pine and eucalypts are selected by seasonal fires and avoided by unseasonal fires which, in turn, showed high preference for heterogeneous mosaics of herbaceous and shrub vegetation. The area covered by fuel types of broadleaved and eucalypt forest stands increased between 2000 and 2018 at the expense of the fuel type corresponding to maritime pine stands. Results emphasize the role of seasonal fires and fire recurrence in these changes, and the weak effect of unseasonal fires. An increase in the maritime pine fuel type was observed only in areas burned by unseasonal fires, after excluding the areas overlapping with seasonal fires.

O município de Amarante do Maranhão, na região sudeste do estado é um dos dez maiores municípios maranhenses em extensão territorial e integra em seu território três Terras Indígenas (TI), precisamente a TI Araribóia, a TI Krikati e a TI Governador. Este município tem registrado nas últimas décadas um intenso processo de desmatamento, derivado do acentuado avanço da atividade agropecuária, com consequências ambientais e sociais sobre os povos indígenas. Entre 2013 e 2022, o total da área ardida acumulada foi equivalente a cerca de três vezes a área da TI Governador. Para reduzir os impactos negativos que frequentemente atingem o território, é fundamental implementar ações que permitam uma vigilância do território que incremente a deteção precoce, a par de uma atitude dissuasora e que por sua vez, permitam uma maior rapidez da primeira intervenção. Recorrendo-se a Sistemas de Informação Geográfica (SIG), esta investigação permitiu identificar e confirmar várias vulnerabilidades associadas à extinção de incêndios: a limitação na detecção precoce de um potencial incêndio; e o tempo de primeira intervenção que excede o limite de 30 minutos, fundamental para controle de um incêndio inicial, traduzindo-se numa maior complexidade no controle e extinção. A análise desenvolvida permitiu identificar a necessidade de implementar um sistema de vigilância assente na definição de um número de locais estratégicos e o reforço e distribuição de recursos por zonas, com o fim de garantir a deteção precoce e reduzir o tempo de primeira intervenção, aumentando assim a eficiência e a eficácia da prevenção e combate.