Historical information on wildfires and dendrochronological studies offer meaningful clues about fire and climate regimes, factors that affect forest structure and dynamics. This study aimed to determine the effect of fire history on vegetation dynamics and successional pathways of areas under different fire management policies in the Lagunas de Montebello National Park (LMNP), Chiapas, México. The selected study sites were El Parque area under fire exclusion policies since 1961; Tziscao-inhabited area under fire prohibition since 1984; and Antelá area with a traditional agricultural fire management history. A Pinus oocarpa ring-width chronology was used as a proxy for climate variability to which wildfire occurrence was mapped and to determine the establishment patterns of this dominant species. Current vegetation composition and structure and fuel loads were determined to characterise the study sites. Large wildfires, like those occurring in 1984 and 1998, were associated with periods of high humidity followed by intense droughts; they were linked to strong El Niño events and severely impacted the LMNP. Vegetation dynamics indicated simplification of mesophyll forest (climax) to pine-oaksweetgum forests, with Pinus dominating the overstorey in all sampling sites. Pine, oak and sweetgum species were the dominant juvenile trees in Antelá, El Parque and Tziscao, respectively. Late-successional seedlings (i.e., Prunus)were present in Antelá and El Parque, while were absent from Tziscao where several wildfires had occurred. Fuel accumulation in sites within protected areas subject to fire exclusion policies was very high (40-68 t ha -1 ); in contrast, it was the lowest in rural Antelá (24 t ha -1 ). Considering vegetation vulnerability to wildfires associated with extreme humid-dry climate events, increased fire hazard due to fuel accumulation, and the socio-ecological impacts of these events, we recommend revising the fire exclusion policies currently implemented in the LMNP and applying an integrated fire management approach that incorporates local socio-ecological conditions.

is one of the most important protected areas in terms of ecology and the provision of ecosystem services in the state of Chiapas; however, it lacks long-term climate information to support comprehensive plans for the conservation of endangered species and ecosystem restoration actions. The objectives of this work were to analyze: (i) the interannual variability of the annual rings of Pinus oocarpa Schiede in the Lagunas de Montebello National Park, as influenced by climate; and (ii) the ocean-atmosphere phenomena influence on both the interannual variability of the total ring-width series. A dendrochronological series of P. oocarpa was built for the period 1857-2018 (162 years), which indicates the presence of extreme hydroclimatic events in the region. Of these, the 1998 drought was a milestone for the management of this natural area due to the high-intensity fires that affected the area and caused unprecedented ecological, social, and economic damage in the site history. The climatic variables with the greatest influence on the annual radial increase of the species are precipitation and maximum temperature in winter-spring, when growth is positively associated with precipitation and negatively associated with temperature, attributed to increases in evapotranspiration. El Niño Southern Oscillation was the phenomenon with the highest correlation with climatic variability and the radial growth of the species, in frequencies of less than five years, although the positive influence of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation was also assessed annually. Global warming, characterized by increasing temperature, threatens the persistence of plant communities in the study area; therefore, knowing its impact on the growth of species of economic importance is essential to support conservation actions.