Assessing Wildfire Regimes in Indigenous Lands of the Brazilian Savannah-Like Cerrado

Abstract

The Brazilian savannah-like Cerrado is classified as a fire-dependent biome. Human activities have altered the fire regimes in the region, and as a result, not all fires have ecological benefits. The indigenous lands (ILs) of the Brazilian Cerrado have registered the recurrence of forest fires. Thus, the diagnosis of these events is fundamental to understanding the burning regimes and their consequences. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the fire regimes in Cerrado’s indigenous lands from 2008 to 2017. We used the Landsat time series, at 30 m spatial resolution, available in the Google Earth Engine platform to delineate the burned areas. We used precipitation data from a meteorological station to define the rainy season (RS), early dry season (EDS), middle dry season (MDS), and late dry season (LDS) periods. During 2008–2017, our results show that the total burned area in the indigenous lands and surrounding area was 2,289,562 hectares, distributed in 14,653 scars. Most fires took place between June and November, and the annual burned area was quite different in the years studied. It was also possible to identify areas with high fire recurrence. The fire regime patterns described here are the first step towards understanding the fire regimes in the region and establishing directions to improve management strategies and guide public policies.

Vegetation Fires in the Lubumbashi Charcoal Production Basin (The Democratic Republic of the Congo): Drivers, Extent and Spatiotemporal Dynamics

“…Vegetation fires have a significant impact on biodiversity and fragile ecosystems, as highlighted by studies such as Ref. [80]. In the specific context of miombo, these fires play a crucial role in species regeneration [81].…”

Prescribed Burning Reduces Large, High-Intensity Wildfires and Emissions in the Brazilian Savanna

“…Eloy et al [43] analyzed the two first years of the IFM program in the Jalapão region, recognizing a BA reduction of (4-21%) in the late-dry-season, revealing that burning mosaics can be beneficial to wildfire prevention. Finally, Melo et al [45] investigated nine ITs in northeastern Cerrado regarding fire recurrence patterns, fire-dependent characteristics of Cerrado, and the tendency to extend the BA due to climate impacts.…”

“…Emergent literature seeks to show how PB has been contributing to decreasing wildfires in Brazilian savannas, mainly based on field campaigns or local observation [25,26,[38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. The majority of those studies rely on statistical summaries of active fire counts and total values of BA [6,39,43,45,46]. Therefore, a systematic analysis considering additional fire characteristics, such as fire intensity, date of burn occurrence, emissions, and patchiness, is urgently needed to enable further characterization of PB benefits.…”

Avaliação espaço-temporal de focos de calor no sudoeste do estado de Goiás, Brasil

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