Scientists find a surprising result on global wildfires: They’re actually burning less land – Washington Post

Around the world, the amount of land being burned in wildfires is declining and human activity is largely the cause, scientists say. According to a new study, out Thursday in the journal Science, global burned area has declined by nearly a quarter in the past two decades. The surprisingdecreaseoccurred largely as agriculture has expanded and intensified throughout the world, taking over many of the natural areas where wildfires commonly occur.

While many recent studies have suggested that climate change will cause longer and more intense fire seasons in certain parts of the world recent research has suggested that its been making wildfires in the western United Statesmore intense for decades the new study indicates thathuman land-use changes also have a significant impact on when and where fires occur. In many places, the influence of human land use is simply just stronger than the climate signal, said the new studys lead author,Niels Andela, a research scientist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center.

This work highlights how humans can shape global fire regimes,David Bowman, a global wildfire expert and professor of environmental-change biology at the University of Tasmania who was not involved with the research, said in an email. Realistically factoring in humans into global climate change and global carbon dynamic projections has always been difficult, and this work demonstrates that this difficulty must be more thoroughly addressed to create plausible scenarios of Earth system change.

The researcherscame to their conclusions by analyzing satellite data on burned area across the planet between 1998 and 2015. During this period, they found that burned area declined about 24 percent an enormous area, according to Andela with much of the decrease occurring in the worlds grasslands and savannas.

The researchers alsoused a model to investigate the effectof factors such as precipitation and human activities on the global fire patterns. They found that precipitation had little influenceon the long-term decline in global burned area but human activity, and particularly agriculture, was a strong driver.

In some places, particularly tropical forest landscapes, the researchers found that agricultural activity was actually associated with an increase in fires, probably as a result of agricultural waste burning or deforestation to make room for cropland. But these increases were outweighed by the areas whereagriculture was associated with a reduction in burned area, mainly in grassland and savanna landscapes, where theres less biomass available to burn and where fire may be less necessary as a land-clearing or management tool.

The researchers found that fire reductions were particularly pronounced in placeswith greater socioeconomic development and higher investment in their pastures and croplands. Wealthier areas maybe less inclined to risk their crops, livestock, homes and infrastructure by using fire as a management tool, the researchers suggest, and the people living in these places also may be less likely to accept the poor air quality caused by smoke from wildfires. In fact, they may begin to employ fire suppression tactics to prevent natural wildfires from occurring.

These global fire reductions may come with pros and cons, the researchers note. For one thing, fire is a natural elementof manyecosystems life cycles, helping to recycle nutrients, regulate competition amongtypes of plants and make space for new growth. So suppressingwildfires can actually have a negative impact on a landscapes vegetation and biodiversity.

On the other hand, the researchers note that a reduction in fire also comes witha declinein the carbon emissions it produces, which could be helpful in the fight against climate change. That said, theres the potential that the carbon releasedby the land conversion and agricultural expansion driving these declines may actually offset the reduction infire emissions. A great deal more research will be necessary before scientists can say for sure how all of these changes are affecting the global carbon cycle, Andela said.

And Bowman, the University of Tasmania scientist, also pointed out that this study should not be construed as suggesting the global wildfire crisis is being resolved. Even while burned area is declining on a global scale, human management techniques such as starting fires where they dont belong and suppressing them where they might otherwise naturally occur may actually be priming many landscapes for more-extreme wildfires in the future. Fire suppression, in particular, can sometimes lead to an overabundance of dry fuel in certain areas, and these unburned spacesmay eventually burn ferociously under hotter and drier conditions expected by climate change, Bowman suggested.

Andela also added that overall I wouldnt describe our findings as being a positive thing for the Earth system or global ecosystems. The spread of agriculture and the decrease in natural burning, particularly in grassland ecosystems worldwide, is indicative ofthe profound changes taking place in these natural landscapes, he said.

Thedisappearance of fire from those ecosystemsreally symbolizeshow we are using these last wildernessesof the Earth, he said.

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Scientists find a surprising result on global wildfires: They're actually burning less land - Washington Post