Citation

Mataveli G, de Oliveira G, Libonati R, Silva-Junior CHL, Anderson LO. Fire (Basel) 2023; 6(7): e275.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publications Institute)

DOI

10.3390/fire6070275

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Vegetation fires represent a major disturbance in the tropics, with South America notable for having both fire-sensitive (e.g., Amazonia and Atlantic Forest) and fire-prone (e.g., Cerrado and Pantanal) biomes. In addition, fire activity in this region is associated with anthropogenic and biophysical processes, including deforestation and crop management, lightning, and favorable meteorological conditions. The complexity of vegetation fires in South America is observed from two recent fire crises: the 2019 Amazonia fire crisis, which was mainly associated with deforestation [1], and the 2020 Pantanal fire crisis [2], which was triggered by unprecedented drought and heat wave events [3,4,5].

It has been recognized that wildfires directly or indirectly affect several of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, although they are not explicitly mentioned by them [6,7]. Despite this, wildfires in South America have been progressively increasing in terms of their frequency and impact. Concurrently, the quantification of their drivers, their extension, the post-disturbance recovery, the associated economic losses, their emission of trace gases and aerosols, and how to prevent them remains challenging. The number of articles published on this topic is increasing; using the Web of Science Core Collection database, we conducted an advanced search with the terms “Fires” and “South America” to identify articles published from 1990 to 2022. This search returned a total of 986 peer-reviewed articles, with 58% of them published within the last 10 years (Figure 1). This demonstrates the consolidation of this research field over time. We also note that only four South American countries were represented among the countries of the top 10 corresponding author ...

Language: en

Keywords

n/a