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FIRE ECOLOGY

Burning questions about ecosystems

Nature Geoscience volume 12, pages 86–87 (2019)Cite this article

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Cumulative wildfires or prescribed burning produce different outcomes for the vegetation, suggest two long-term analyses of fire-affected ecosystems. Climate change and land management practices are altering how ecosystems function.

Wildfires are often thought of as solely destructive in nature. They are also frequently forgotten about once the flames are out. However, most terrestrial vegetation has evolved over millions of years in the presence of periodic wildfires1. Consequently, long-term persistence and health of many ecosystems is tied to experiencing wildfires with characteristic fire regimes — patterns of frequency, size, seasonal timing, fire behaviour and ecosystem effects. Within a given climate, neither the vegetation nor the associated fire regime can be changed in isolation. To alter one is to set in motion changes in the other. The interplay between fire and vegetation landscapes has important ecosystem-specific implications for sustainable land management and climate change mitigation practices. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Marrs et al.2 and Bowd et al.3 report how indirect effects of fires can persist long after the flames are quenched and can be linked to sustainable management and land use practices in boreal moorlands and Australian forests, respectively.

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Fig. 1: The balance between fire regimes and vegetation.

References

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  1. Appalachian Laboratory, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES), Frostburg, MD, USA

    Mark A. Cochrane

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  1. Mark A. Cochrane
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Correspondence to Mark A. Cochrane.

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Cochrane, M.A. Burning questions about ecosystems. Nature Geosci 12, 86–87 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0306-x

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