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Fire
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Socio-Ecological Problems of Fire in Rangelands Wrought by Global Change
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Socio-Ecological Problems of Fire in Rangelands Wrought by Global Change

A special issue of Fire (ISSN 2571-6255).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2023) | Viewed by 6069

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Devan Allen McGranahan

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1. USDA Agricultural Research Service, Livestock & Range Research Laboratory, Miles City, MT 59301, USA
2. Environmental & Conservation Sciences, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58108, USA
Interests: sustainable agriculture; grazing; fire ecology; working landscapes; rangeland management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Carissa L. Wonkka

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
USDA Agricultural Research Service, Northern Plains Agricultural Research Laboratory, Sidney, MT 59270, USA
Interests: physiological effects of fire on rangeland plants; rangeland community responses to fire, and traits-based approaches to ecosystem restoration; social and policy dimensions of prescribed fire use in rangelands
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Sofía Laura Gonzalez

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente (INIBIOMA), CONICET, Bariloche 8400, Rio Negro, Argentina
Interests: fuels, and fire effects on vegetation in grasslands, including post-disturbance restoration; wildland-urban interfaces
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Rangelands are widely recognized as a varied and complex set of ecosystems that occur around the world. Many of these diverse ecosystems share three characteristics: They are working landscapes that support both biodiversity and rural livelihoods; wildland fire is an influential ecosystem process; myriad aspects of global change have the potential to disrupt or alter essential ecosystem functions. As in any ecosystem, the process of a disturbance like fire can be understood as a regime through the explicit description of factors such as the frequency, type, intensity, seasonality, and spatial pattern of vegetation combustion. Substantial changes to any aspect of a fire regime have the potential to alter the ecosystem’s capacity to function as required to deliver essential ecosystem services. In this Special Issue, we highlight efforts to understand the impacts of global change on rangeland fire regimes worldwide from both social and ecological perspectives. Authors are encouraged to identify “Wicked Problems” related to wildland fire at the interface of rangeland ecosystem integrity and human well-being, and address these problems by considering how aspects of fire regimes are altered by global change and how specific elements of the fire regime can be managed to mitigate these effects. “Global change” is considered broadly and can include but is not limited to the following: environmental changes such as average or extremes in temperature, precipitation, or nutrient inputs; invasive plant or animal species, woody plant encroachment, or changes in ecosystem management, that affect the amount, type, condition, and configuration of fuelbeds; land-use changes from agriculture, forestry, or energy development that contribute to landscape alterations such as fragmentation, settlement patterns, and broad vegetation types. A combination of both original social and ecological data is not required, but the socio-ecological context must be made clear. Reviews and case studies that meet these objectives are encouraged.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Land.

Dr. Devan Allen McGranahan
Dr. Carissa L. Wonkka
Dr. Sofía Laura Gonzalez
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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.

Keywords

  • Human dimensions of wildland fire
  • Fire ecology, management, and policy
  • Wildland fire regimes
  • Rural livelihoods on rangelands
  • Land-use change
  • Global change impacts on ecological function and ecosystem service delivery

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Related Special Issue

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

31 pages, 3838 KiB  
Article
Pyrogeography of the Western Great Plains: A 40-Year History of Fire in Semi-Arid Rangelands
by Devan Allen McGranahan and Carissa L. Wonkka
Fire 2024, 7(1), 32; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire7010032 - 17 Jan 2024
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2253
Abstract
This study describes spatial and temporal patterns in fire across the US Western Great Plains over the last 40 years. Although pyrogeographic studies have explored the nexus of fire patterns in relation to the bio-physical environment and socio-ecological trends, most of this research [...] Read more.
This study describes spatial and temporal patterns in fire across the US Western Great Plains over the last 40 years. Although pyrogeographic studies have explored the nexus of fire patterns in relation to the bio-physical environment and socio-ecological trends, most of this research has focused on forested ecosystems and regions long known for conflict between wildfires and human development, especially at the wildland–urban interface. But evidence suggests large wildfire activity is increasing in the US Great Plains, and the Western Great Plains—a Land Resource Region comprised of four ecoregions, Northwestern Plains, High Plains, Nebraska Sandhills, and Southwestern Tablelands—not only contains some of the largest areas of rangeland in the US but also the highest concentration of public land in the Great Plains. As such, the Western Great Plains provides an opportunity to explore fire activity in primarily rural landscapes with a combination of public and private ownership, all dominated by rangeland vegetation. We combined several publicly-available datasets containing fire records between 1992 and 2020 to create two databases, one with georeferenced point data on 60,575 wildfire events in the region, and another with georeferenced perimeter data for 2665 fires. Ignition by humans was the dominant cause of fires. No ecoregion showed a statistically significant trend towards either increasing or decreasing the annual burned area. The Northwestern Plains had the most burned area and the greatest number of incidents—consistently around or above 1000 incidents per year since 1992—with the majority in July. The High Plains showed the greatest increase in annual fire incidence, never reaching more than 200–300 per year 1992–2009, and averaging above 1000 incidents per year since 2010. Few long-term trends in human population, weather, or fuel metrics appear strongly associated with fire patterns in any ecoregion, although the years 2006, 2012, and 2017 stood out for their levels of fire activity, and these years often frequently logged extreme values in wildland fuel metrics. These relationships merit much closer examination in the Western Great Plains, because like other rangeland-dominated landscapes, the fine fuels that comprise these wildland fuelbeds are much more responsive to fine-scale changes in moisture conditions. Rural Western Great Plains landscapes are a mosaic of public and private land ownership, and an increasing impact of wildfires on public grazing lands—which are often situated within other jurisdictions or ownership—will likely have an impact on rural livelihoods. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Socio-Ecological Problems of Fire in Rangelands Wrought by Global Change)
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15 pages, 14522 KiB  
Article
Pastoral Burning and Its Contribution to the Fire Regime of Alto Minho, Portugal
by Emanuel Oliveira and Paulo M. Fernandes
Fire 2023, 6(5), 210; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire6050210 - 19 May 2023
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2681
Abstract
Alto Minho (in northwestern Iberia) is one of the European regions most affected by fires. Many of these fires originate from rangeland management of Atlantic heathlands, and, while being illegal, often are not actively suppressed. In this study, pastoral fires (autumn-to-spring fires unrecorded [...] Read more.
Alto Minho (in northwestern Iberia) is one of the European regions most affected by fires. Many of these fires originate from rangeland management of Atlantic heathlands, and, while being illegal, often are not actively suppressed. In this study, pastoral fires (autumn-to-spring fires unrecorded by authorities), spring wildfires, and summer wildfires were independently mapped and dated from remote sensing. Alto Minho burned at a mean annual rate of 5.0% of the territory between 2001 and 2020. Pastoral burning totalled 40,788 hectares during the period, accounting for 20% of the total burnt area. Rangeland burning occurs mostly from December to April, the rainiest months that guarantee the conditions for pasture renewal and fire self-extinction. The mean fire return interval of pastoral burning is slightly higher than that of wildfires (13 years vs. 11 years), except in part of the inner mountains where it dominates fire activity. Pastoral fires are more frequent and largely prevail over wildfires in the parishes with higher livestock quantities. Conversely, the largest wildfires and higher summer burnt areas correspond with very low livestock and nearly non-existing pastoral fires. Traditional fire knowledge should not be overlooked by fire management, as it contributes to more sustainable fire regimes and ecosystems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Socio-Ecological Problems of Fire in Rangelands Wrought by Global Change)
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