The Year 2017: Megafires and Management in the Cerrado

Abstract

The year 2017 was a megafire year, when huge areas burned on different continents. In Brazil, a great extension of the Cerrado burned, raising once more the discussion about the “zero-fire” policy. Indeed, most protected areas of the Cerrado adopted a policy of fire exclusion and prevention, leading to periodic megafire events. Last year, 78% of the Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park burned at the end of the dry season, attracting media attention. Furthermore, 85% of the Reserva Natural Serra do Tombador burned as a result of a large accumulation of fuel caused by the zero-fire policy. In 2014, some protected areas started to implement the Integrate Fire Management (IFM) strategy. During 2017, in contrast to other protected areas, the Estação Ecológica Serra Geral do Tocantins experienced no megafire events, suggesting that a few years of IFM implementation led to changes in its fire regime. Therefore, we intended here to compare the total burned area and number of fire scars between the protected areas where IFM was implemented and those where fire exclusion is the adopted policy. The use of fire as a management tool aimed at wildfire prevention and biodiversity preservation should be reconsidered by local managers and environmental authorities for most Cerrado protected areas, especially those where open savanna physiognomies prevail. Changing the paradigm is a hard task, but last year’s events showed the zero-fire policy would bring more damage than benefits to Cerrado protected areas.

No Net Loss of Species Diversity After Prescribed Fires in the Brazilian Savanna

“…There is a global consensus among savanna ecologists that burning is essential for maintaining heterogeneity and biodiversity of tropical savannas (Coutinho, 1982(Coutinho, , 1990Bond and Keeley, 2005;Andersen et al, 2012;Maravalhas and Vasconcelos, 2014;Durigan and Ratter, 2016;Pivello, 2017;Schmidt et al, 2018). On the other hand, fire suppression has shown to be ecologically and economically unsustainable (Bowman et al, 2013), eventually resulting in catastrophic firestorms that cause huge carbon emissions and biodiversity losses (Silveira et al, 1999;Bond and Archibald, 2003;França, 2010;Pivello, 2011;Batista et al, 2018;Fidelis et al, 2018). In the last years, fire experiments have increased in Brazil (Dias and Miranda, 2010;Rissi et al, 2017;Schmidt et al, 2018), including our experiment presented here.…”

Sharing Multiple Perspectives on Burning: Towards a Participatory and Intercultural Fire Management Policy in Venezuela, Brazil, and Guyana

“…Another relevant question that emerged during the discussion was: How do Indigenous people cope and adapt to climate change? In the workshop, Indigenous participants mentioned that they have observed environmental signs of changing climatic patterns, such as extended dry seasons, higher environmental temperatures, and unexpected changes in weather (rains during dry season or dry periods during wet seasons) that they relate to a higher frequency, spread, and severity of wildfires in their lands [18,23,29]. Representatives of firefighters' institutions and Indigenous communities both acknowledged the damage and impact caused by these big wildfires or "megafires" and the difficulties in coping with them ( Figure 3, see also footnote 1).…”

“…Representatives of firefighters' institutions and Indigenous communities both acknowledged the damage and impact caused by these big wildfires or "megafires" and the difficulties in coping with them ( Figure 3, see also footnote 1). Academics pointed out that the Indigenous fire management strategy, which reduces the accumulation of combustible material in fire-prone environments, can contribute to preventing the occurrence and spread of large fires to the edge zones and tropical forests, and be more effective than expensive technical approaches to combat wildfires, especially in the face of increasingly severe climate change scenarios [5,10,18,23,25,29,33]. Under increasing temperature scenarios, the fire risk also increases with any accident or loss of control during traditional fire practices for agriculture, hunting, and other purposes.…”

Mapping Forest Canopy Fuels in the Western United States with LiDAR–Landsat Covariance

“…These predictions are essential for wildfire risk assessments, which are increasing in necessity because strategic and tactical fire management decisions are now called to be explicitly risk based [14,17]. Wildfires are increasing in size and severity with unprecedented destruction and associated costs [18][19][20]. Climate change is set to increase aridity across the western US with expected increases to fire disturbance [21,22].…”