Fire-induced loss of the world’s most biodiverse forests in Latin America

Abstract

Fire plays a dominant role in deforestation, particularly in the tropics, but the relative extent of transformations and influence of fire frequency on eventual forest loss remain unclear. Here, we analyze the frequency of fire and its influence on postfire forest trajectories between 2001 and 2018. We account for ~1.1% of Latin American forests burnt in 2002–2003 (8,465,850 ha). Although 40.1% of forests (3,393,250 ha) burned only once, by 2018, ~48% of the evergreen forests converted to other, primarily grass-dominated uses. While greater fire frequency yielded more transformation, our results reveal the staggering impact of even a single fire. Increasing fire frequency imposes greater risks of irreversible forest loss, transforming forests into ecosystems increasingly vulnerable to degradation. Reversing this trend is indispensable to both mitigate and adapt to climate change globally. As climate change transforms fire regimes across the region, key actions are needed to conserve Latin American forests.

The conservation impacts of ecological disturbance: Time‐bound estimates of population loss and recovery for fauna affected by the 2019–2020 Australian megafires

“…The sudden increase in extinction risks across many taxa may be a new and recurring feature of megafires. Similar effects from single fire seasons have been reported from the Amazon, where megafires in 2019 potentially increased the extinction risk for up to half the listed threatened plant taxa in the region (Mortara et al, 2020), and contributed to the broad-scale conversion of some forest types to savanna (Armenteras et al, 2021). Some invasive species and diseases have impacted biodiversity at comparable scales.…”

“…Although the immediate impacts of megafires may be large, the longer‐term effects of increases in fire frequency, size and severity, driven by a changing climate (Di Virgilio et al., 2019; Goss et al., 2020), could be greater. The structure and composition of some ecosystems are shifting, with areas becoming uninhabitable for some species (Armenteras et al., 2021; Bergstrom et al., 2021). Moreover, populations of some taxa may be unable to recover between fire events, leading to a ratchet of progressive decline (Lindenmayer et al., 2021).…”

Forests, Coca, and Conflict: Grass Frontier Dynamics and Deforestation in the Amazon-Andes

“…Despite including only infrastructure spending and population as sociodemographic predictors, our results have implications for understanding land cover changes, particularly from forest to grassy vegetation. Throughout Latin America, the transformation of forest to grass is a ubiquitous land cover change that signals the human-induced conversion of forests to pastures, especially at the forest frontier (Graesser et al 2015;Armenteras et al 2017) and is often mediated by fire (Armenteras et al 2021). Our results thus show quantitative evidence for dynamic replacement of forest with grass cover for pastureland use, and how this change relates directly or indirectly to coca production, counter-drug policy, and conflict.…”

Assessing the predictive efficacy of six machine learning algorithms for the susceptibility of Indian forests to fire

“…In 2015 alone, ~98 Mha of forested area was burned, especially in the tropics (FAO 2020). In fact, fire-induced tropical forest loss accounts for 69% of total carbon addition to the atmosphere (Baccini et al 2017;Armenteras et al 2021). Large-scale forest loss due to fire hazards can considerably decrease the terrestrial carbon sink, and thereby alter regional weather and global climate at large (Bonan 2008;Swann et al 2018;van Wees et al 2021).…”

“…Drought leads to fuel accumulation, and a rise in surface temperature, which increases forests' flammability (Brando et al 2019;Ma et al 2020), thereby triggering frequent and severe fires (De Faria et al 2017). Additionally, the interactions of climate factors with the natural topography and wind speed direction result in severe and extended forest fire events (Buma 2015;De Faria et al 2017;Brando et al 2019;French 2020;Armenteras et al 2021).…”