Mediterranean forest conversion crosses the regeneration threshold

// Die Hypothese

The fire return interval in the Mediterranean compartment falls below the reproductive maturity of its dominant pines, so burnt stands no longer reconstitute as forest. Conversion to matorral becomes the majority outcome rather than the local exception.

6 countries · 29 Mha mediterranean canopy · timber, carbon, slope stability

// Modellierte Auswirkung

The Mediterranean compartment carries a disturbance return interval near 116 years against 15-25 years of regeneration, a Forest Carrying Index around 0.17. Under a postulated 3% annual growth in disturbance flux the interval meets regeneration around 2085; at 8% it arrives around 2048. The growth rate is postulated and measured nowhere, and it dominates the result — that spread is the finding, not the dates. The threshold is already crossed locally in western Iberia and the Peloponnese, where fire returns every 10-25 years against 15-20 years of pine reproductive maturity. What follows is a redistribution, not a collapse: matorral is an ecosystem, adapted to fire. The losses are in timber, carbon stock, water retention and slope stability.

Wahrscheinlichkeit und Schwere sind interne Schätzungen nach der v3.2-Methodik. DEMO-Daten, nicht zur Zitierung.