How does landscape change after fire? Assessing the global patterns and
influential factors
Abstract
Fire, as a strong disturbance type, can exert significant impacts on
biosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, cryosphere, atmosphere and human
society. It can inherently trigger both critical transitions in
ecosystems and dramatic changes in landscapes, which can be detected as
alternations in land cover types. However, the general changing patterns
and possible influential factors of post-fire landscape change remain
largely unclear on a global scale. Obtaining such knowledge is of great
value in advancing the understanding of fire ecology and promoting
sustainable fire management. Here, we combined the satellite
observations of long-term land cover and burned areas to assess the
global post-fire landscape change patterns from 2005 to 2015. The
results showed that the identified areas with post-fire landscape change
accounted for approximately 0.36–0.74% of the annual global burned
areas during the study period and were most common in countries such as
Brazil, Argentina, and the D.R. Congo. The most common landscape change
types were “forest-to-agriculture” (31.93%), “forest-to-shrubland”
(26.23%) and “agriculture-to-forest” (18.74%) in 2005, 2010 and
2015, respectively. In addition, the conversion between agriculture and
forest as well as the shrubland and forest after fire were found to be
bidirectional. After assessing 14 fire-related climatic, topographic,
ecological and socioeconomic factors that could potentially influence
the post-fire landscape change occurrence probability, burned area size
and vegetation cover diversity were identified as the two strongest
predictors, followed by aspect, fire intensity and slope. Our results
provide a global overview of post-fire landscape change patterns and
offer guidance for making sustainable fire management policies.