Fire Patterns, Driving Factors, and Multidimensional Impacts Under Climate Change and Human Activities

Dear Colleagues,

Forest fires have emerged as a critical global challenge to ecological security due to their characteristics of sudden onset, high randomness, and devastating destructive potential. Under the combined influence of climate change and human activities, both the frequency and intensity of forest fires have risen dramatically. Compounding this issue, the substantial carbon emissions generated by these fires further exacerbate the climate crisis, creating a dangerous feedback loop between forest fires and global warming. A scientific understanding of fire patterns, driving factors, and ecological impacts forms the foundation for effective fire prevention, control strategies, and post-fire recovery management.

Analyzing the dynamic changes in forest fires across temporal scales (annual and fire season variations) provides essential data for fire risk zoning and preventive policymaking. The occurrence of forest fires is driven by complex interactions between multiple factors, including fire management policies, ignition sources, climatic conditions, vegetation types, terrain features, and fuel characteristics. These factors range from stable variables to the semi-stable and highly unstable, all of which collectively influence fire ignition, spread, and behavior. Different factor combinations determine fire severity—low-intensity fires may enhance nutrient cycling, whereas high-intensity fires may cause catastrophic forest loss and irreversible ecological damage. High-intensity forest fires with high concentrations of smoke emissions can also cause surrounding towns to be shrouded in smoke, leading to serious social impacts such as panic among residents.

Presently, due to the impact of global climate change and human activities, forest fire prevention and post-fire management face unprecedented challenges. The comprehensive scientific analysis of spatiotemporal fire distribution patterns, driving factors, and multidimensional impacts (economic, ecological, and societal) can help mitigate fire risks and consequences, and provide important reference for the formulation of forest fire prevention management policies.

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

1. Climate change and forest fires;
2. Lightning-caused fire risk;
3. Distribution of human fire sources;
4. The factors driving forest fires;
5. The spatial and temporal distribution of forest fires;
6. Forest fire risk assessment and zoning;
7. The ecological, economic, and social impacts of forest fire;
8. Forest burning and fire behavior;
9. Forest fire smoke emissions;
10. Fuel management and treatment.

Prof. Dr. Guang Yang
Dr. Fengjun Zhao
Prof. Dr. Yanlong Shan
Prof. Dr. Qiuhua Wang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fire is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• wildfires
• climate change
• human activity
• fire prediction and forecasting
• fire prevention and control
• fire ecology
• fuel management
• fire behavior
• smoke emissions