Post-fire forest regeneration dynamics in dry ecosystems: restoration and seedlings performance from microscale to landscape level.

Natural disturbances, including wildland fires, are a fundamental component of forest ecosystems, which have the capability to return to a pre-disturbance condition under usual disturbance regimes. In case of unusual events, or to accelerate post-fire forest regeneration, it is important to understand the mechanisms of forest regeneration, in order to assist land managers in post-fire scenarios. This thesis aims at investigating post-fire forest regeneration in dry ecosystems. The first chapter examines the effect of coarse woody debris, in the forms of log erosion barriers and downed logs, on soil temperature and moisture in a burnt forest during one dry season. The second chapter compares the facilitation effect of biological legacies and an abiotic feature on artificial regeneration survival and growth, and on the near-ground illuminance and temperature around regeneration. The third chapter tries to link post-fire natural regeneration in three Pinus nigra J. F. Arnold forests with topographic indices, amount of coarse woody debris, and ground cover. The fourth chapter presents a novel method to detect presence and height of conifer regeneration in dry ecosystems with the use of point clouds derived from UAV images.