Tropical forests play a major role in determining the current atmospheric conc
entration of greenhouse
gases.
The
role
of
tropical
forests
is
critical
because
they
are
carbon
-
dense
with
large amount
of
carbon
is
stored.
With
almost
8
million
km
2
of
the
humid
tropics,
the
tropical
forests
are faced to several issues altering their con
tribution to the carbon cycle, such as deforestation
and wildfires. In Europe, extreme wildfires ravaged the European forests in the last years. These situations were extremely
dangerous not only for the environment, but also for the socioeconomical
point
of
view
because
to
the
proximity
of
forests
from
the
urban
cities
or
from
the agriculture fields. This fact has motivated the European scientific community to explore the wildfires
behavior in the purpose to master their expansion, and limit their harmful
effect.
In this plenary presentation, the French scientific
expertise will be exposed with an eye on a possible extrapolation to the tropical forest’s particularity. For this purpose, t
he
following points are
going
to
be
discussed:
(1)
understanding
wildfi
re
mechanisms,
(2)
giving
a
vision
about
French scientific
experience on forest fires research field, and finally (3) trying to extrapolate these scientific experiences to tropical
forests.
