AFS is launching a new topical collection “Sustainable Policies for Wild Fire Management in Forests”

This special issue aims to focus on effective wildfire management in the future by managing long-term resilience and restoration approaches to balance the ecological instability due to wildfires in the forests. Researchers and scholars are welcomed to give more robust insights on sustainable forest landscape management during forest fires, for protecting life and properties.

Guest Editors : Dr. Ashish Kr. Luhach, Dr. Hassan Fouad Mohamed El-Sayed and Dr. Prateek Agrawal

Forest landscapes are vigorous and change in response to climate change and various environmental factors. The importance of protecting the forest from natural and anthropogenic agents has increased to ensure preserving the forest and its resources. Wildfires occur due to natural events and human-made changes; however, the primary factor to be considered is how it is managed with suitable plans and policies to save wildlife and forest landscapes. In the past, forest recovered on its own from the damage of wildfires, but when we consider today’s scenario, wildfires are sturdy and take more time to subside due to the uncertain climatic conditions and natural environment. Safeguarding measures and instant alert systems need to be developed for sustainable wildfire management, warning the closer communities of the approaching fire. Immediate tracking of climatic changes is essential to address the urgent need to protect wildlife and communities. Policies like reducing emissions from the degradation of the forest regions and deforestation will conserve and enhance carbon stock due to wildfires. Supportive policies to reduce peatlands forest fire-related greenhouse emissions will improvise environmental stability. With proactive measures, the forest’s dead trees and woods can produce new revenues reinvested in restoring the forest. Investments and funding of stakeholders on the wildfire management should be before wildfires’ event to ensure the economic stability is not disturbed due to more cost incurred on the damage of wildfires without earlier preparations.

Instead of acting after wildfires, smart wildfire management systems need to be developed for earlier actions. Today, with advanced technologies, climate and ecological changes are continuously monitored. Implementing a telecommunication system with quick alert mechanisms in the vulnerable forest regions would help mitigate the forest fire effectively without any damage to life. Stakeholders and government need to focus on forest landscape restoration after a forest fire to regain the ecological stability in the particular region. The barriers to protecting the world’s forest regions are significant and entrenched. It needs extensive political will, a substantial commitment of the forest communities, and the necessary resources to prepare for the next wildfire. In the upcoming decades, countries need to rethink the approach towards managing the fire. Though restoring the functionality of burnt forests is a challenge to government and environmentalists with effective policies towards sustainable wildfire management will help them tackle the problem with efficient techniques and analysis. Government policies to support retrofitting homes near the fire-prone forest areas with fire-resistance systems will enhance the wildfire management process. Plans for precautionary power cuts in the wake of fire emergencies will also help manage wildfires’ risk.

The potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Strategies for prevention of fire and combat its impacts
• Impact of forest fires on the local communities and sustainable prevention policies
• Challenges of wildfires on the environment and substantial policies to manage it
• Robust methods to control the spread of wildfires in fire-prone regions
• Role of sustainable Forest landscape restoration for better wildfire management system
• Redesigning the forest environment approaches for sustainable wildfire management
• Forest fire prevention policies and their impact on the economy
• Anthropogenic factors involved in causing wildfires and policies to prevent it
• Effectiveness of monitoring climatic changes in vulnerable forest regions for sustainable management of wildfires
• Importance of forest wildlife protection to maintain sustainable ecological system
• Migration of communities due to forest fires and its effects on the forest landscape shifts
• Forestry investments and policies to protect forest woodlands
• Factors bridging climatic change and wildfires and effective fire management techniques

Deadline for online manuscript submission: 21 September 2021. Earlier papers will not have to wait for others and will be published directly online after final acceptation.

Authors must follow the instructions for authors available on Springer website and may use the templates available for the Title page and the Research article. Upon submission in Editorial Manager, authors must select “Sust Policies for WFM in Forests” as Topical collection to assign their manuscripts to the special issue.

We are looking forward to receiving your manuscript and ready to answer any questions sent to annforsci@inrae.fr

Short biographies of our Guest Editors

Dr. Ashish kr. Luhach is working as Senior lecturer at The Papua New Guinea University of Technology, Papua New Guinea. He has more than a decade of teaching and research experience. He has also worked with various reputed universities and also holds administrative experience as well. He received Ph.D. degree in department of computer science from Banas thali University, India and post graduated from Latrobe University, Australia. His areas of research are Real time and Fault tolerant Cyber Physical systems, Service Oriented Architectures, Wireless Sensor Networks and Bio-inspired Computing. Dr. Luhach has published more 80 research paper in reputed journals and conferences, which are indexed in various international databases. He has also edited various special issues in reputed journals and he is Editor/Conference Co-chair for various conferences such ICAICR 2017, 2018, 2019, ICTSCI 2019, IMTC 2017, the proceedings published by Springer and ACM ICPS and in addition to this he is also Guest Editor/Editorial board members of various reputed journals. He is member of IEEE, CSI, ACM, IAENG and IACSIT.

Dr. Hassan Fouad Mohamed-El-Sayed is currently a Full Professor of biomaterials and tissue engineering with King Saud University and Helwan University. He studied at Helwan University, Egypt, for the B.Sc. and M.Sc., in 1990 and 1996, respectively. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in the field of biomedical polymers from Helwan and Leeds University, in 2000. He has worked as a Research Scientist with the Vienna University of Technology. He was one among the Top 100 Health Professionals and 2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century 2011. He has translated many books written by Morgan and Claypool & John G. Webster. He is also an active member of various council and inspection committee in Ministry of Higher Education, Egypt. He is a Referee for many International ISI journals.

Dr. Prateek Agrawal currently works as post-doctoral researcher at Department of ITEC at University of Klagenfurt (aka Aplen Adria University), Austria. He is also designated as Associate Professor in School of Computer Science & Engineering, Lovely Professional University, India. He completed his Ph.D. (Computer Science Engineering) at IKG-Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar in 2018 with his MTech. (Software Engineering) at ABV-Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management (IIITM), Gwalior and B.Tech. (Computer Science Engineering) at Faculty of Engineering & Technology Agra College, Agra. His research areas include Natural Language Processing (NLP), Fuzzy Systems, AI, and Machine Learning.