Role in FIRE-ADAPT: co-host of the Mexico Study Hub
Organisation: Comisión Nacional Forestal (CONAFOR)
Country: Mexico
About the activities of the coming gathering at the Mexico Study Hub
What is the objective of these activities
Operationally generate real-time training for wildfire fighters or wildland firefighters. However, what we seek in Mexico is to promote a public policy aimed at understanding fire as a management tool, as a natural disturbance that is part of the ecosystem. Part of the objectives is to promote research in the country, establish sampling plots to generate information that helps the understanding of fire as an ecological factor that operates naturally in ecosystems and that we have badly excluded from many of them. So, something very important that we have to do, not only in Mexico, but worldwide, is to understand that fire has always been there, that as human beings we have excluded it badly, but that we have to introduce it correctly, in an ecologically acceptable way. In such a way that, at first, it is a training for wildfire fighters so that they see what a prescribed burning is like and understand how the modeling of fires or fire in ecosystems is. In a second moment, it is the generation of applied research to understand that we have to learn to live with fire because we cannot exclude it from ecosystems.
What particular activities will be done
A Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX), created by The Nature Conservancy, for combatant personnel part of the incident command system. However, this is for the operational part, for the research part there will be three moments: the moment prior to the application of the fire, which is to establish the sampling plots with the identified objectives; a second moment during the operation, which is the monitoring of fire behaviour; and a third moment, which are the effects of fire, when you will see how the fire behaved during the training/the prescription, and how this behaviour influences the reaction of the ecosystem in the different strata or levels that you want to measure (at ground, herbaceous, shrub and tree levels). Then, the work will be integral.
What benefit I hope to get from interacting with partners on those days
Gain experience and generate knowledge. Knowledge that not only is useful in Mexico, but also worldwide, because fire management policy is innovative in many countries, including Mexico, and we have to promote this from applied research.
What I would like partners to take home from those days
Both technical and cultural knowledge and experience. We want them to take a lot of data to be able to quantify different research objectives, and to have a good experience in the country. Mexico is a megadiverse country, especially at the cultural level, and we would like them to take that cultural wealth that Mexico has to contribute to the world.
What impact in the country the activities of the Study Hub can have
To be able to start with a series of international trainings, such as this year’s TREX, and promote the good use of fire. I think we need to increase the number of prescribed burns and technicians specialised in them. Also, in the long term, within the fire management programmes, which by law are established in Mexico at the municipal, state and federal levels, that the local technicians themselves can diagnose and decide each year where the management of forest fuels is required through burning or other means.
This is me
Favourite food: amarillo de pollo from Oaxaca
Favourite series: Band of Brothers
Favourite singer or band: Pedro Infante
I admire: Dante Arturo Rodríguez Trejo, my teacher
Superpower I´d like to have: control people´s minds from time to time.
In Spain, I’d take you to: Oaxaca, to know the culture, gastronomy and diversity of ecosystems.