Increasing threat of wildfires : the year 2020 in perspective : a Global Ecology and Biogeography special issue

Aim: Each year, wild and managed fires burn roughly 4 million km2 [~400 million hectares (Mha)] of savanna, forest, grassland and agricultural ecosystems. Land use and climate change have altered fire regimes throughout the world, with a trend toward higher-severity fires found from Australia, the A...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Global Ecology and Biogeography
Main Authors: Nolan, Rachael H. (R17682), Anderson, Liana O., Poulter, Benjamin, Varner, J. Morgan
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: U.K., Wiley-Blackwell Publishing 2022
Subjects:
XXXXXX - Unknown
Arctic
Austral
Climate change
Siberia
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13588
https://hdl.handle.net/1959.7/uws:69875
Description
Summary:Aim: Each year, wild and managed fires burn roughly 4 million km2 [~400 million hectares (Mha)] of savanna, forest, grassland and agricultural ecosystems. Land use and climate change have altered fire regimes throughout the world, with a trend toward higher-severity fires found from Australia, the Americas, Europe and Asia, to the Arctic. In 2020, there were notable catastrophic fires in Australia (in the 2019/20 Austral fire season), the Western United States, South America and Siberia. These fires defined much of the global fire year and were compounded by the socio-economic disruption of the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Location: Global. Time period: 2020. Major taxa studied: Flora and fauna. Methods: The Global Ecology and Biogeography special issue, ‘Increasing threat of wildfires: the year 2020 in perspective’, includes 18 papers that catalogue these fire events, their drivers and their impacts on flora and fauna. Results: Collectively, these papers highlight the importance of fire response traits, exposure and sensitivity to interacting threats in determining fire impacts. Main conclusions: The scale of the 2020 megafires has helped identify new research areas required to more comprehensively assess fire impacts on biodiversity and biogeochemistry and to inform ecosystem management.

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