About this Research Topic
The fire regime of tropical forests is changing rapidly, with implications for forest cover, carbon storage, species composition, biodiversity, function, and climate. These changes are having a range of impacts over varying spatiotemporal scales. While deforestation and fire occurrence had been declining over the first half of the past decade, record fires are now being observed for Amazonia. The response of contemporary forests to increasing fire may depend on a number of factors, including sensitivity of species to fire, past and present fire regimes, fire adaptations, landscape configuration, environment, and climate, with potential post-fire lag effects that are poorly understood. For example, it is unclear over what spatiotemporal scales the present fire regimes differ from the past. Historical fire regimes may have selected species with fire-resistant traits for some regions. Landscape fragmentation is altering edge and interior forest conditions. Deforestation and burning are also transforming soils, with implications for carbon storage and post-fire land-use. The consequences of these transformations of tropical forests through fire require further research.
This Research Topic will focus on current and past changes to tropical forests due to fire, including selective logging, deforestation, intact forests, secondary forests, land-cover land-use change, shifting fire regime, drought, and climate change. The themes covered in this topic include:
• Current and past impacts of fire, including the historical record
• Post-fire changes in soil and vegetation composition, structure, carbon storage, dynamics, fuel load, and fire risk
• Use of fire in agricultural practices by local communities
• Definitions of forest degradation and forest resilience to fire
• Phylogenetic, physiological, anatomical, and structural adaptations to fire
• Policy, management, and conservation options to address the effects of fire
• Future response and fire regime to climate change
This Research Topic will focus on current and past changes to tropical forests due to fire, including selective logging, deforestation, intact forests, secondary forests, land-cover land-use change, shifting fire regime, drought, and climate change. The themes covered in this topic include:
• Current and past impacts of fire, including the historical record
• Post-fire changes in soil and vegetation composition, structure, carbon storage, dynamics, fuel load, and fire risk
• Use of fire in agricultural practices by local communities
• Definitions of forest degradation and forest resilience to fire
• Phylogenetic, physiological, anatomical, and structural adaptations to fire
• Policy, management, and conservation options to address the effects of fire
• Future response and fire regime to climate change
Keywords: Logging, Fire, Climate Change, Drought, Sustainability, Intact Forests, Degraded Forests, Forest Management, Forest Policy
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
