The REMAINS model

Model's aim

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:

1. Land-cover changes
2. Wildfires and fire suppression
3. Prescribed fire
4. Forest recover
5. Post-fire regeneration
6. Afforestation
7. 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.

Package installation

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)

How to run the REMAINS model

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

References

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