A human-driven decline in global burned area
Open accessAbstract
Burn less, baby, burn less: Humans have, and always have had, a major impact on wildfire activity, which is expected to increase in our warming world. Andela et al. use satellite data to show that, unexpectedly, global burned area declined by ∼25% over the past 18 years, despite the influence of climate. The decrease has been largest in savannas and grasslands because of agricultural expansion and intensification. The decline of burned area has consequences for predictions of future changes to the atmosphere, vegetation, and the terrestrial carbon sink. Science , this issue p. 1356
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Globally, there are data on lightning strikes and human-ignition proxies, such as distance to roads, transportation corridors and railroad tracks.
“Globally, there are data on lightning strikes and human-ignition proxies, such as distance to roads, transportation corridors and railroad tracks (Andela et al., 2017;Loboda, 2009;Morton, Page, DeFries, Collatz, & Hurtt, 2013).”
From Fire as a fundamental ecological process: Research advances and frontiers (2020) · cites this paper as Andela et al., 2017
There remain challenges associated with capturing impacts of land use, the expansion of the wildland-urban interface, and the natural variability associated with lightning ignitions and ignition efficiency.
“However, there remain challenges associated with capturing impacts of land use (Andela et al., 2017;Schoennagel et al., 2017), the expansion of the wildland-urban interface (Radeloff et al., 2018) and the natural variability associated with lightning ignitions and ignition efficiency (the proportion of lightning strikes that generate ignitions; Romps, Seeley, Vollaro, & Molinari, 2014).”
From Fire as a fundamental ecological process: Research advances and frontiers (2020) · cites this paper as Andela et al., 2017
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“However, there remain challenges associated with capturing impacts of land use (Andela et al., 2017; Schoennagel et al., 2017), the expansion of the wildland-urban interface (Radeloff et al., 2018) and the natural variability associated with lightning ignitions and ignition efficiency (the…”
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- Authors
- Andela, N., Morton, D. C., Giglio, L., Chen, Y., van der Werf, G. R., Kasibhatla, P. S., DeFries, R. S., Collatz, G. J., Hantson, S., Kloster, S., Bachelet, D., Forrest, M., Lasslop, G., Li, F., Mangeon, S., Melton, J. R., Yue, C., & Randerson, J. T.
- Affiliations
- Goddard Space Flight Center (US)
- University of Maryland, College Park (US)
- University of California, Irvine (US)
- Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
- Duke University (US)
- Columbia University (US)
- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (DE)
- Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (DE)
- Oregon State University (US)
- Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (DE)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Imperial College London (GB)
- Environment and Climate Change Canada (CA)
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Andela, N.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2017-06-30
- Volume
- 356
- Issue
- 6345
- Pages
- 1356-1362
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- PMC
- PMC6047075
- OpenAlex
- W2732607881
- Cited by
- 1,262
- References
- 9
- Citations by year
- 2026: 151 · 2025: 164 · 2024: 122 · 2023: 186 · 2022: 189 · 2021: 177 · 2020: 101 · 2019: 89 · 2018: 70 · 2017: 12
- FWCI
- 51.56
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- research.vu.nl
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- VU Research Portal (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- ORCA Online Research @Cardiff (Cardiff University) (submittedVersion)
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (submittedVersion, public-domain)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF3269)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Fire effects on ecosystems
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Land Use and Ecosystem Services
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Remote Sensing in Agriculture
- Keywords
- fire trends, agricultural expansion, savanna burning, fire emissions, aerosol concentration, terrestrial carbon sink, fire models, fire prediction model, anthropogenic landscapes, rainfall variability
- MeSH terms
- Agriculture, Climate, Conservation of Natural Resources, Fires, Human Activities, Models, Theoretical, Ecosystem, Carbon Sequestration, Satellite Imagery
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