Abstract
The year 2017 was a megafire year, when huge areas burned on different continents. In Brazil, a great extension of the Cerrado burned, raising once more the discussion about the “zero-fire” policy. Indeed, most protected areas of the Cerrado adopted a policy of fire exclusion and prevention, leading to periodic megafire events. Last year, 78% of the Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park burned at the end of the dry season, attracting media attention. Furthermore, 85% of the Reserva Natural Serra do Tombador burned as a result of a large accumulation of fuel caused by the zero-fire policy. In 2014, some protected areas started to implement the Integrate Fire Management (IFM) strategy. During 2017, in contrast to other protected areas, the Estação Ecológica Serra Geral do Tocantins experienced no megafire events, suggesting that a few years of IFM implementation led to changes in its fire regime. Therefore, we intended here to compare the total burned area and number of fire scars between the protected areas where IFM was implemented and those where fire exclusion is the adopted policy. The use of fire as a management tool aimed at wildfire prevention and biodiversity preservation should be reconsidered by local managers and environmental authorities for most Cerrado protected areas, especially those where open savanna physiognomies prevail. Changing the paradigm is a hard task, but last year’s events showed the zero-fire policy would bring more damage than benefits to Cerrado protected areas.
Highlights
A Brief History of WildfiresFire shapes vegetation throughout the world, contributing to the diversification of angiosperms and influencing the evolution and distribution of ecosystems [1,2]
In Brazil, a great extension of the Cerrado burned, raising once more the discussion about the “zero-fire” policy
In the region of the Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park (CVNP) and the Reserva Natural Serra do Tombador (RNST), rains usually start at the end of September to beginning of October
Summary
Fire shapes vegetation throughout the world, contributing to the diversification of angiosperms and influencing the evolution and distribution of ecosystems [1,2]. In Portugal, the extent of the burn was four times the average area burned annually in the last decade [23], and 112 people died [24]. Spain had the highest number of forest fires of a decade [25] Both countries have experienced drastic land use changes since the 1950s, where a combination of afforestation with dense stands of long-needled flammable pines, forest management without biomass removal, and shrub encroachment on abandoned lands drastically increased the fire risk [26,27]. While the number of active fires per year in the Amazon and Cerrado remained high and similar to previous years (Figure 1A), the mean annual burned area increased significantly [28]). [28])
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