ORCID Profile
0000-0001-5726-2536
Current Organisations
Universidad Autonoma de Madrid Facultad de Ciencias
,
Fundación Agencia Aragonesa para la Investigación y el Desarrollo
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Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2019
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2008
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 08-02-2023
DOI: 10.1101/2023.02.07.527551
Abstract: Human activity has fundamentally altered wildfire on Earth, creating serious consequences for human health, global bio ersity, and climate change. However, it remains difficult to predict fire interactions with land use, management, and climate change, representing a serious knowledge gap and vulnerability. We used expert assessment to combine opinions about past and future fire regimes from 98 wildfire researchers. We asked for quantitative and qualitative assessments of the frequency, type, and implications of fire regime change from the beginning of the Holocene through the year 2300. Respondents indicated that direct human activity was already influencing wildfires locally since at least ~ 12,000 years BP, though natural climate variability remained the dominant driver of fire regime until around 5000 years BP. Responses showed a ten-fold increase in the rate of wildfire regime change during the last 250 years compared with the rest of the Holocene, corresponding first with the intensification and extensification of land use and later with anthropogenic climate change. Looking to the future, fire regimes were predicted to intensify, with increases in fire frequency, severity, and/or size in all biomes except grassland ecosystems. Fire regime showed quite different climate sensitivities across biomes, but the likelihood of fire regime change increased with higher greenhouse gas emission scenarios for all biomes. Bio ersity, carbon storage, and other ecosystem services were predicted to decrease for most biomes under higher emission scenarios. We present recommendations for adaptation and mitigation under emerging fire regimes, concluding that management options are seriously constrained under higher emission scenarios.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 14-02-2019
Abstract: Fire regime changes are considered a major threat to future bio ersity in the Mediterranean Basin. Such predictions remain uncertain, given that fire regime changes and their ecological impacts occur over timescales that are too long for direct observation. Here we analyse centennial- and millennial-scale shifts in fire regimes and compositional turnover to track the consequences of fire regime shifts on Mediterranean vegetation ersity. We estimated rate-of-change, richness and compositional turnover (beta ersity) in 13 selected high-resolution palaeoecological records from Mediterranean Iberia and compared these with charcoal-inferred fire regime changes. Event sequence analysis showed fire regime shifts to be significantly temporally associated with compositional turnover, particularly during the last three millennia. We find that the timing and direction of fire and ersity change in Mediterranean Iberia are best explained by long-term human–environment interactions dating back perhaps 7500 years. Evidence suggests that Neolithic burning propagated a first wave of increasing vegetation openness and promoted woodland ersity around early farming settlements. Landscape transformation intensified around 5500 to 5000 cal. yr BP and accelerated during the last two millennia, as fire led to permanent transitions in ecosystem state. These fire episodes increased open vegetation ersity, decreased woodland ersity and significantly altered richness on a regional scale. Our study suggests that anthropogenic fires played a primary role in ersity changes in Mediterranean Iberia. Their millennia-long legacy in today’s vegetation should be considered for bio ersity conservation and landscape management.
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: Spain
Location: Spain
Location: No location found
Location: No location found
No related grants have been discovered for Graciela Gil-Romera.