The University of Zaragoza will hold the launch meeting of the European project EFHERA on September 18, focusing on the restoration of forest areas after major fires. The meeting will bring together institutional and technical representatives from Spain, France, and Portugal at the Betancourt building in the Río Ebro Campus.
The event will take place from 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM in the Board Room of the Betancourt building at the Río Ebro Campus. The program will include a general presentation of the project, a communication plan, and the definition of the first steps for coordination among the participating partners.
The General Directorate of Forest Management of the Government of Aragon, through Sarga, coordinates this initiative focused on improving post-fire hydrological and environmental recovery in agroforestry areas. Researchers from the Institute of Research in Engineering of Aragon (I3A) are working to develop a digital platform to support the decisions of those responsible for forest restoration.
According to Sergio Martínez from the Fluid Dynamics Technologies Group at I3A, the goal is to «provide them with a tool to support their decisions, enabling them to calculate or simulate future scenarios and have quantitative data on how those areas would evolve». The models developed will serve as support for decision-making based on scientific data, especially relevant in the face of increasingly large fires that require «very thorough planning».
EFHERA is part of the Interreg Sudoe program and receives funding of 1.4 million euros. The project brings together 8 main partners and 8 collaborators from the three involved countries. Among the participants, the University of Zaragoza and I3A stand out as technical partners, along with the Diputación de Ávila, the University of Salamanca, and the Aula Dei Experimental Station (CSIC) in Spain; the University of Évora and the Intermunicipal Community of the Algarve in Portugal; and the University of Pau in France.
Pilot Actions and Projections
Between three and four pilot actions are anticipated in areas affected by fires in recent years in the three countries of the SUDOE region. The Fluid Dynamics Technologies Group will be able to project what could happen after these events at 10, 50, 100, or 200 years, simulating how precipitation would become runoff over the terrain and how it would erode slopes and transport sediments.
The project represents the culmination of a line of work initiated four years ago in the computational hydraulics section, which was funded through an Impulso project from I3A and an Innovation project from the Government of Aragon.
