Fires play an important role in many of earth’s ecosystems, returning nutrients to the soil, for example. In the case of savannas and other grasslands, fires keep trees and other plant life in check, helping maintain the open landscape for the animals who depend on it.
Fires around the world are declining. While that may sound like a good thing, according to a new study published in the journal Science, that is not the case. The savannas in particular are suffering without the help of more frequent fires to maintain the ecosystem.
Additionally, study authors state that “fewer and smaller fires reduced aerosol concentrations, modified vegetation structure, and increased the magnitude of terrestrial carbon sink.”
Lead author Niels Andela, a research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the University of California, Irvine, says we should be concerned: “Fires are really critical to these ecosystems and if we take them away from the landscape, we’ll see big changes in the vegetation types and biodiversity.”
A new model for predicting fires can help
Using satellite imagery, the study authors, and Moore Foundation grantees, found that from 1998 to 2015 the amount of burned land has decreased by nearly 25 percent globally. A key contributor to the decline is the rise of commercial agriculture. Approximately 36 percent of the world’s surface is used for pasture or croplands. To learn more about the implications of changing agricultural management and the mechanisms that regulate fires in these human-dominated areas, the researchers used satellite data to identify long-term trends in burned areas and created a conceptual model for predicting fire trends in human-dominated landscapes.
"We believe the primary drivers of the fire loss are surging populations of livestock, more roads, and more farms," explained James Randerson, chancellor’s professor of earth system science at University of California, Irvine. "These human activities reduce fuels and fragment the landscape, slowing the growth of natural fires."
Conserving the savannas, and other areas, will not be without its challenges. However, the satellite fire data and the new model can serve as important tools for governments, corporations and others in weighing and managing necessary tradeoffs.
Read more from the University of California, Irvine here, and news stories in Popular Science and The Washington Post.
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