Putting fire on the map of Brazilian savanna ecoregions

Silva, Patrícia S.; Nogueira, Joana; Rodrigues, Julia Abrantes; Santos, Filippe L.M.; Pereira, José M. C.; DaCamara, Carlos C.; Daldegan, G. Antunes; Pereira, Allan Arantes; Peres, Leonardo F.; Schmidt, Isabel Belloni; Libonati, Renata

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.113098

Cited by 34 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 105 publications

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“…In the MFS, Xerente shows a predominance of medium scars that account for most of the total BA, whereas in Araguaia, few large fires correspond to most of the BA in this season. In the WFS, few large fires represent the greatest total BA for both ITs, as observed by other areas over the Cerrado biome [50,80,81,91] and are similar to those of tropical savannas in Africa and Australia [31,32,34,92,93]. Those patterns are in agreement with a recent study [50], which showed that few scars (7.1%) were responsible for more than 71.8% of the total BA in the last 20 years in Bananal ecoregion, where Araguaia and Xerente are located.…”

Section: Evaluating Pbssupporting

confidence: 90%

“…The Cerrado is a mosaic of water dynamics and different ecosystems [47] that are subject to high intra-annual variability in precipitation [48] and a well-defined dry season in winter, generally from May to October [49]. According to Silva et al [50], the fire intraannual trends Cerrado is spatially heterogeneous with marked north-south fire activity gradient, with increasingly large and less intense fires in the latest agricultural frontier in the north. More intense fires are found in the Amazon frontier biome due to uncontrolled deforestation and different histories of land conversion.…”

Section: Study Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More intense fires are found in the Amazon frontier biome due to uncontrolled deforestation and different histories of land conversion. Throughout the year, the infrequent large fires occur in late-dry-season and are responsible for the majority of burned area, whereas smaller fires, albeit more frequent in early-dry-season, have been decreasing in number [50].…”

Section: Study Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…FRP represents a measure of the instantaneous release of combustion energy and is associated with the fire intensity of the burning process [50]. We used FRP (MW) data derived from 1 km MODIS/Aqua Thermal Anomalies/Fire locations from 2003 to 2018, and only pixels with presumed vegetation fires (type 0) were used to minimize false alarms.…”

Section: Fire Climate and Emissions Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Then, we performed a comprehensive analysis of BA and the total number of scars during the last two decades using the GFA dataset, according to 4 scar size classes: very small (VS, 0-50 ha); small (S, 50-100 ha); medium (M, 100-1000 ha); large (L, >1000 ha), based on previous works [50,[80][81][82]. For each scar size class, we conducted separate analyses for the 2 fire seasons, determined by management practices: management fire season (MFS) encompassing the months when PBs are conducted, and wildfire season (WFS), corresponding to the months when PBs are not conducted, and fires are considered "bad-fires" by local inhabitants.…”

Section: Pre-processing and Statistical Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Santos

Nogueira

Souza

et al. 2021

Fire

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Brazil has recently (2014) changed from a zero-fire policy to an Integrated Fire Management (IFM) program with the active use of prescribed burning (PB) in federal Protected Areas (PA) and Indigenous Territories (IT) of the Brazilian savanna (Cerrado). PB is commonly applied in the management of fire-prone ecosystems to mitigate large, high-intensity wildfires, the associated emissions, and high fire suppression costs. However, the effectiveness of such fire management in reducing large wildfires and emissions over Brazil remains mostly unevaluated. Here, we aim to fill the gap in the scientific evidence of the PB benefits by relying on the most up-to-date, satellite-derived fire datasets of burned area (BA), fire size, duration, emissions, and intensity from 2003 to 2018. We focused on two Cerrado ITs with different sizes and hydrological regimes, Xerente and Araguaia, where IFM has been in place since 2015. To understand fire regime dynamics, we divided the study period into three phases according to the prevalent fire policy and the individual fire scars into four size classes. We considered two fire seasons: management fire season (MFS, which goes from rainy to mid-dry season, when PBs are undertaken) and wildfires season (WFS, when PBs are not performed and fires tend to grow out of control). Our results show that the implementation of the IFM program was responsible for a decrease of the areas affected by high fire recurrence in Xerente and Araguaia, when compared with the Zero Fire Phase (2008–2013). In both regions, PB effectively reduced the large wildfires occurrence, the number of medium and large scars, fire intensity, and emissions, changing the prevalent fire season from the WFS to the MFS. Such reductions are significant since WFS causes higher negative impacts on biodiversity conservation and higher greenhouse gas emissions. We conclude that the effect on wildfires can still be reduced if effective fire management policies, including PB, continue to be implemented during the coming decades.

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Section: Evaluating Pbssupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Study Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Study Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Fire Climate and Emissions Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Pre-processing and Statistical Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

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

Santos

Nogueira

Souza

et al. 2021

Fire

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Tracking Changes in Vegetation Structure Following Fire in the Cerrado Biome using ICESat-2

Konduri

Morton

Andela

2022

Preprint

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Fires are an integral part in the Earth system, causing widespread changes in ecosystem structure and function, atmospheric chemistry, and climate (Bowman et al., 2009). Fire-induced changes in the horizontal and vertical structure of vegetation drive substantial shifts in ecosystem carbon storage, surface energy balance, and species' habitats (Frolking et al., 2009). Savannas and grasslands, which occupy about 20% of the land surface and store 15% of vegetation carbon stocks, account for more than 80% of the global annual burned area (Giglio et al., 2013). Fires have played an important role in the evolution of savannas and grasslands across the globe (Beerling & Osborne, 2006;Edwards et al., 2010;Van der Werf et al., 2010). Widespread changes in savanna fire regimes in response to human activity (Andela et al., 2017) and climate (Abatzoglou et al., 2019); therefore, have the potential to alter vegetation structure and carbon storage in savanna ecosystems.

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