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Fire regime refers to the statistical characteristics of fire events within specific spatio-temporal contexts, shaped by interactions among climatic conditions, vegetation types and natural or anthropogenic ignitions. Under the dual pressures of intensified global climate changes and human activities, fire regimes worldwide are undergoing unprecedented transformations, marked by increasing frequency of large and intense wildfires in some regions, yet declining fire activity in others. These fire regime changes (FRC) may drive responses in ecosystem structure and function across spatio-temporal scales, posing significant challenges to socio-economic adaptation and mitigation capacities. To date, research on the patterns and mechanisms of global FRC has rapidly expanded, with investigations into driving factors revealing complex interactions. This review synthesizes research advancements in FRC by analysing 17 articles from this special issue and 249 additional publications retrieved from the Web of Science. We systematically outline the key characteristics of FRC, geographical hotspots of fire regime transformation, critical fire-prone vegetation types, primary climatic and anthropogenic drivers and ecosystem adaptations and feedbacks. Finally, we highlight research frontiers and identify key approaches to advance this field and emphasize an interdisciplinary perspective in understanding and adapting to FRC. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Novel fire regimes under climate changes and human influences: impacts, ecosystem responses and feedbacks’.
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Fire as a fundamental ecological process: Research advances and frontiers
1. Fire is a powerful ecological and evolutionary force that regulates organismal traits, population sizes, species interactions, community composition, carbon and nutrient cycling and ecosystem function. It also presents a rapidly growing societal challenge, due to both increasingly destructive wildfires and fire exclusion in fire‐dependent ecosystems. As an ecological process, fire integrates complex feedbacks among biological, social and geophysical processes, requiring coordination across several fields and scales of study. 2. Here, we describe the diversity of ways in which fire operates as a fundamental ecological and evolutionary process on Earth. We explore research priorities in six categories of fire ecology: (a) characteristics of fire regimes, (b) changing fire regimes, (c) fire effects on above‐ground ecology, (d) fire effects on below‐ground ecology, (e) fire behaviour and (f) fire ecology modelling. 3. We identify three emergent themes: the need to study fire across temporal scales, to assess the mechanisms underlying a variety of ecological feedbacks involving fire and to improve representation of fire in a range of modelling contexts. 4. Synthesis : As fire regimes and our relationships with fire continue to change, prioritizing these research areas will facilitate understanding of the ecological causes and consequences of future fires and rethinking fire management alternatives.
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- PAR ID:
- 10162960
- Author(s) / Creator(s):
- ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; more »
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Ecology
- ISSN:
- 0022-0477
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.13403
