Good fire, bad fire: It depends on who burns
Section snippets
Historical aspects
Paleontological studies indicate that, over 32,400 years, fires have occurred in the Brazilian Cerrado (a vast tropical savanna ecoregion) (Ferraz-Vicentini and Salgado-Laboriau, 1996), i.e. before the first records of human presence (Neves and Piló, 2008). This evidence proves that fire occurs naturally, mostly ignited by lightning, since there are no active volcanoes in Brazil. More recently, from the arrival of the first hominids, fire regimes (seasonality, intensity and severity, fire
Fire impacts and management in the Brazilian savannas (Cerrado)
Natural ignitions are quite common in the Cerrado, a flammable biome whose biodiversity, landscape structure and biogeochemical cycles have been shaped by fire for thousands of years (Beerling and Osborne, 2006; Miranda et al., 2009, 2010; Simon et al., 2009). Despite being a natural component in the Cerrado, increasing human occupation has altered the natural backgrounds of fire activity and subjected ecosystems to frequencies and intensities of disturbance to which species are probably not
Fire impacts and management in the Brazilian rainforest (Amazon)
Wildfires in most undisturbed, tall, closed-canopy, tropical rain forests are virtually impossible because a moist microclimate and high rainfall create nearly non-flammable conditions. For that reason, most fires in the Amazon Forest are associated with environmental crimes, irregular occupation, land grabbing, deforestation and conflicts with environmental agencies. In 2019, 75% of hotspots derived from the VIIRS satellite are concentrated in 46% of the Legal Amazon territory, in a region
Conclusions
In summary, there is not a single management strategy that is appropriate for all Brazilian biomes. In the Amazon, where species are predominantly fire-sensitive, suppression and fuel control near forests seems to be the best alternative for biodiversity conservation in these ecosystems. In the Cerrado, which is characterized by a large mosaic of fire-sensitive and fire-resilient physiognomies, management needs to ensure the provision of resources and conditions for species with different
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Christian N. Berlinck: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Eugênia K.L. Batista: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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