Forest Fires and Biodiversity in the Anthropocene
A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Ecology and Management".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (5 October 2021) | Viewed by 13435
Special Issue Editors
Interests: fire ecology; biodiversity conservation; forest management; ornithology; entomology
Interests: fire ecology; herpetology; conservation biology
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Socioeconomic and climate factors are modifying fire regimes. Wildfires of unprecedented extension and severity have recently occurred in Australia, South and North America, Siberia, and the Mediterranean Basin. Most often, these fires interact with former forest disturbances like insect outbreaks, diseases, windstorms, droughts, or air pollution, all of which are common in Anthropocene forests. Furthermore, burned forests are often harvested, and salvage logging constitutes a second intense disturbance within a short time period.
The idea that pyrodiversity begets biodiversity has been demonstrated under some circumstances, but it is also known that changes in fire regimes are a threat to species and ecosystems. Knowledge on the ecological effects of a new fire-regime scenario, and the interactions with other forest disturbances are fundamental to understand how biodiversity will respond to this current environmental instability, and to anticipate strategies for forest resilience and biodiversity conservation. Unfortunately, there are many knowledge gaps on the responses of particular taxa (especially invertebrates) to fire, the effects of post-fire management strategies for biodiversity conservation, the disruptions of biotic interactions caused by the fire, or the importance of particular functional traits for resilience to fire.
For this Special Issue, we are inviting papers that provide novel insights into the responses of biodiversity to the new fire regimes we are facing. The main topics include, but are not limited to, the following: biodiversity in fire-prone landscapes, pyrodiversity–biodiversity studies, post-fire recovery of animal and plant populations, multi-taxon approaches to community responses, fire and biotic interactions, fire refuges for biodiversity, additive effects of fire and other disturbances, and tests of management strategies to favor biodiversity in fire-prone regions.
Dr. Pere Pons
Dr. Xavier Santos
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- New fires
- Biodiversity
- Fire refuges
- Population recovery
- Animal communities
- Plant communities
- Additive disturbances
- Forest management
- Field studies
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