From innovative seed balls to virtual reality training for firefighters – the large-scale EU Green Deal TREEADS project she was leading with 47-48 partners from 13 to 14 European countries and Taiwan, resulted in 26 different solutions and technologies for integrated fire management and adaptive forest restoration: Dr Ragni Fjellgaard Mikalsen is Senior Research Scientist at RISE Fire Research in Trondheim (Norway) and one of the speakers at the workshop ‘Nature-based solutions against forest wildfires’ on 12 May 2026 in the European Parliament, hosted by the Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA).
Is there anything specific regarding Scandinavian countries when it comes to changes that occur in the wildfire patterns? Can you compare the situation with the situation in the Iberian Peninsula?
Ragni Fjellgaard Mikalsen: In the Mediterranean areas, many wildfires are big events that are impacting whole communities and large, vast areas of nature. Here in Scandinavia, wildfires are currently less massive. But we’re seeing that they’re getting more intense and extreme.
There are quite a few differences between the different regions in Europe, including the type of vegetation, the topography of the landscape, the weather conditions, and also the level of society’s preparedness for wildfires. In Norway, we have a very long coastline and specific weather. It also makes a big difference if the wildfire happens far away from any infrastructure, compared to events that are closer to urban areas.
How does the change in land management affect wildfire risk?
Ragni Fjellgaard Mikalsen: Fewer areas in Europe are now natural. In Scandinavia and many other parts of Europe, many forests are planted, managed and used mainly for forestry. These forests often consist of a very limited number of different species.
For example, large parts of Swedish forests consist of pine trees and spruce trees. However, our colleagues at RISE Sweden are seeing that these kinds of monoculture forests present a big wildfire hazard. But, if every tenth tree is a birch or a leaf type of tree, the wildfire risk in that area goes down by half. This is an example of a nature-based solution that can be applied to mitigate wildfire risk.
Along the coast of Norway, historically, we have been conducting a lot of prescribed burns to get better grazing for our sheep and goats. We had a lot more farmers and a lot more animals grazing in these areas, compared to the current situation.
Our society is also changing to more urbanisation and less agriculture, and that largely impacts the wildfire risk: previously, if the wildfire covered an area without built structures, you could let it burn on its own. Compared to a hundred years ago, today it’s a lot more likely that there are buildings in a particular area, and you have to stop the fire.
There was a change somewhere in the mid-20th century, from a “let it burn” philosophy to a “stop the fire” philosophy. And that has also drastically changed how much biofuel is available to the wildfires in the landscapes around Europe.
Prescribed or controlled burns are one of the nature-based solutions you have been researching during the TREEADS and other projects. How can this help in the current situation?
Ragni Fjellgaard Mikalsen: With a prescribed burn, you intentionally set fire to the landscape to burn overgrown vegetation in a controlled manner, limiting the potential fuel for wildfire.
The other benefit is that in some areas, parts of nature are very reliant on having regular wildfires. But over the last century, we have stopped allowing wildfire cycles to come regularly, which impacts the biodiversity. Prescribed burns could also be used for firefighters’ training.
A large part of the TREEADS project was the different ways of utilising drones in the fight against wildfires. What difference can they bring?
Ragni Fjellgaard Mikalsen: Drones have become increasingly common in wildfire management over the last few years, as they are used to monitor the speed and direction of the fire from the air.
We explored novel potential uses. They can be utilised for hotspot detection, fire suppression, carrying water or other extinguishing agents.
You normally have a helicopter or an aeroplane doing this kind of extinguishment. But with the drone, you can do a lot more targeted extinguishment or mitigation efforts. You can use the drones to break the fire, by wetting an area beforehand and to facilitate evacuation and the reforestation activities.
One of the interesting nature-based solutions developed for reforestation is seed balls and a type of seed container capsule. Could you explain how they work?
Ragni Fjellgaard Mikalsen: When an intense wildfire hits an area, it can damage a big part of the terrain. And you can have problems with erosion and with regrowth, because all the seeds in the soil are dead or burnt up. We wanted to find an efficient way of planting new seeds and help to rehabilitate the landscape after a wildfire. Since the soil might not be very suitable for regrowth for a long time, our seed balls, developed by one of the TREEADS partners, contain absolutely everything the future plant needs, a combination of different microbiota, soil and seeds.
We also have a partner working on a complementary technology, container capsules with the seed solutions inside, which don’t roll away when you drop them onto the soil. Capsules are biodegradable and act as protection from deer or other animals. The drones can be used to distribute seed balls and capsules over a huge area.
The project built a so-called Integral Fire Management Ecosystem. Is this a platform where firefighters or other relevant institutions can acquire knowledge?
Ragni Fjellgaard Mikalsen: The TREEADS Knowledge Hub contains all of the information, results and technology that we have developed throughout the project, and they have been made available to integrate into other types of holistic platforms.
For each one of these technologies, the owners have a plan for moving this forward and getting this implemented into use around Europe. For example, the virtual reality training technology for firefighters is already being used in some European countries.