Cypress trees are firebreaks?

As I was doing research for the Cypress materia mythica, I came across these articles:

• Enigma of the trees that resist wildfires, article at the BBC

• Can Cypress Trees Help Suppress Wildfires?, article in the Smithsonian

Both of which are based on a research article shared in the Journal of Environmental Management.

“Across the board, all the characteristics [the researchers] saw in the cypress trees indicate that they’d help fight wildfires of moderate intensity. The tree's needles and dead litter that falls to the ground are spongy and hold water for a long time, for one. The widely-spaced structure of the tree’s crown slows down air circulation, and the space between its branches reduces the speed at which a fire spreads. Cypress sap also happens to be less flammable than the resin from other trees…The trees are resilient and can grow in a range of soils, so Della Rocca and his colleagues suspect that they could be used to slow down and diffuse fires in a variety of settings.,,Della Rocca says it's important how you plant. He wants to be clear that they’re not advocating for shrubs or neat hedges of cypress trees. For the trees to be effective, they have to grow at random as they normally would in the wild, so they can develop crown structure and litter piles in the same way. They’re experimenting now with how to grow these barriers.”

— Heather Hansman, Can Cypress Trees Help Suppress Wildfires?, article in the Smithsonian, September 16, 2015, bold added by me for emphasis

I wish I’d found this research when I was writing about Greek forest fires back in 2021! The photos, especially in the BBC article, are quite amazing: an untouched Cypress colony surrounded by charred land.