Megafires of the Past: Years of Discovery and Challenges

Dear Colleagues,

Fire is an important Earth system and the primary terrestrial ecosystem disturbance agent on a global scale, and it depends on vegetation characteristics, climate, and human activities. This phenomenon generates feedback by affecting biogeochemical cycles, vegetation composition and structure, land–atmosphere, water and heat exchanges, atmospheric chemistry and composition, and human health and property (Li et al., 2013, 2014).

Megafires were once rare, but they are becoming increasingly common. Thus, nowadays, its occurrence is frequent as an isolated event or encompassed in multiple fire episodes in various regions of the world, which has contributed to the increasing concerns of society, because they constitute a hard disaster phenomenon with many serious negative effects, even many human deaths.

China’s 1987 Great Black Dragon Fire perhaps marks the beginning of the megafire phenomenon in the modern era; this wildland fire claimed the lives of over 200 people and burned approximately 1.2 million hectares (Salisbury, 1989). There are references to some of these events dating from the nineteenth and twentieth century.

In the 19th century, the Miramichi Fire (1825) and the Peshtigo Fire (1871), and in the 20th century the Great Fire of 1910 in the United States, the Black Friday Bushfire in Victoria, Australia (1939), and the Fire in Brazil (1963) in the state of Paraná, deserves a special mention.

This Special Issue aims to contribute, in the current context of climate change, among other things, to the knowledge and understanding of past megafires in order to better predict the evolution that these will have in the near future.

Because little information is available on past megafires, it is important to study and understand the history of fires in various regions of the world, and especially historic megafires in their many and varied dimensions (causes, consequences, recurrence, severity, size, fatalities, ...).

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• History of wildfires;
• Past megafires;
• Methods and techniques to identify past megafires (e.g, dendrochronological techniques, …)
• Reconstruction of the history of megafires within a region;
• Evolution of fire regimes;
• The relationship between historic megafires and climate;
• The relationship between historic megafires and land use.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. António Bento-Gonçalves
Prof. Dr. Cristina Montiel Molina
Guest Editors

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• history
• wildfires
• historic megafires
• fire regime
• climate change
• land use