Marc Castellnou

Short bio

• Strategic Fire Analyst, GRAF, Catalan Fire Service (since 1999)
• Area Chief, Catalan Fire Service (since 2002)
• Inspector, Type I Incident Commander, Catalan Fire Service (since 2002)
• Founder and Chairman of Pau Costa Foundation (since 2010)
• Developer of wildfire analysis and simulation tools with Wildland Fire Analyst. Tecnosylva. Leon, Spain/San Diego, USA
• Developer of wildfire analysis tool using particle random approach. CPS and EMSYX. Los Angeles, USA. First place in the world wind challenge, NASA. Florence, June 2013.
• Coordinator of public communication sessions in key forest fires. After action reviews with forest owners and rural organitzations. Fires of Cardo 4500 ha May 2012, catalonia. Fire of la Junquera July 2012, 12000 ha.
• Member of the emergency and forest fires round table of ESRI Europe. 2011-2013
• Member of Advisory group for CREAF ( Center of Ecology Research in Forestry and Agriculture of University Autonoma of BCN)
• Associated professor. University of Lleida (since 2015)

Fire, Landscapes and Management: Facts and challenges

Wildfires are becoming a faster and bigger disturbance in our protected ecosystems. Fire paradox is applying the negative selection, so the better we try, the few fires escape our control, but those that overwhelm fire services, cause tremendous damage and havoc in our society. This is driving the response crazy investing in resources almost 90% of what we invest in our ecosystems. At the same time environmentalists increase the demand to protect biodiversity and pushing harder to fire service to be more efficient although it is known this will drive to less but bigger and more destructive fires at an unprecedented scale. We are all defending, but under socioeconomic changes and climate changes, we should be adapting and creating tomorrow’s landscape instead of defending the past landscape. What can we do in front of 6th generation wildfires? How we can make sure biodiversity survives? Are fire engines the solution or will come from biodiversity and mosaic landscape?. Are we being part of the problem or already starting to find a solution? Looking at the events unfolded around the world since 2016, we will go through lessons learned.