Sixteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Due to anthropogenic factors and the impact of climate change, Mediterranean ecosystems are more exposed to the severity of forest fires and mega fires occurred more frequently in recent decades. Semi-structured interviews investigate the identity of the landscape of key actors from the communities of Quillón, Florida, and Yumbel in Chile during 2018. All these communities are in Mediterranean ecosystems that were affected by several forest fires in the past. The results of the interviews were analyzed verbatim in the Atlas.ti software according to categories: visual elements of the visual landscape (before and after the fire), perception / identity (identity of the landscape, identity related to the landscape and landscape practices) and government management at the landscape level (before and after the fire). The first findings indicate that there is a change in the first two elements, while in the third, the respondents say they do not observe changes, which is contradictory indicating that a thorough work has not been done to include this perspective in the ecological and social restoration processes after fires to generate more resilient localities.