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Abstract:
In large parts of temperate-boreal Eurasia the use of fire, including historic slash-and-burn
(shifting) agriculture and other disturbances by land cultivation have contributed to shape landscape patterns
of high ecological and cultural diversity and value, e.g. heathlands, open grasslands and meadows. In the
eastern Euro-Siberian biota, e.g. in the light taiga, natural fire contributed to the shaping of open and stress-
resilient forest ecosystems. The rapid socio-economic changes in the past four decades and the recently
increasing trend of rural exodus all over Eurasia, however, have resulted in abandonment of traditional
land-use methods. With the elimination of these disturbances by cultivation, including traditional burning
practices, large areas of Europe are converting to fallow lands, a process that is associated with ecological
succession towards brush cover and forest, and an overall loss of open habitats. Besides the loss of valuable
biodiversity the abandoned lands constitute an increase of wildfire hazard – a trend that is revealed by a growing number of extremely severe fire disasters. Similarly, the exclusion of fire in natural ecosystems
such as northern boreal and sub-boreal coniferous forests in Eurasia has resulted in changing vegetation
composition and an increase of wildfire hazard, notably in Central-Eastern Eurasia. Changing paradigms
in ecology and nature conservation currently have led to reconsideration of fire-exclusion policies in certain
sectors of land / landscape management, nature conservation and forestry. This paper is an updated version
of the “White Paper on Use of Prescribed Fire in Land Management, Nature Conservation and Forestry in
Temperate-Boreal Eurasia” of 2009
