Landscape and fire in Brittany heathlands

Fire is a recurrent disturbance in heathland landscapes of Brittany. Our study considers relationships between landscape heterogeneity, rate of fire spread and fire frequency. Heterogeneity is defined by the diversity and the fragmentation of landscape units at different scales. This approach of fire processes proves that: (1) perceived landscape heterogeneity is scale dependent; (2) fire speed is correlated with land cover heterogeneity at fine scales, but not at coarse scales; (3) heterogeneity increases with frequent fire, while diversity grows with one fire and reduces with higher fire frequency.