The DOI matches its Crossref record; 66 of the 66 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
A Burning Story: The Role of Fire in the History of Life
Abstract
Ecologists, biogeographers, and paleobotanists have long thought that climate and soils controlled the distribution of ecosystems, with the role of fire getting only limited appreciation. Here we review evidence from different disciplines demonstrating that wildfire appeared concomitant with the origin of terrestrial plants and played an important role throughout the history of life. The importance of fire has waxed and waned in association with changes in climate and paleoatmospheric conditions. Well before the emergence of humans on Earth, fire played a key role in the origins of plant adaptations as well as in the distribution of ecosystems. Humans initiated a new stage in ecosystem fire, using it to make the Earth more suited to their lifestyle. However, as human populations have expanded their use of fire, their actions have come to dominate some ecosystems and change natural processes in ways that threaten the sustainability of some landscapes.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Fire has been a dominant ecological and evolutionary force on Earth since plants colonized the land about 400 Mya (Judson, 2017;Pausas & Keeley, 2009).”
From Fire as a fundamental ecological process: Research advances and frontiers (2020) · cites this paper as Pausas & Keeley, 2009
Citations
Cites
The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (2016) · Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society · doi:10.1111/boj.12385 · Cited by 9,583
THE ANGIOSPERM PHYLOGENY GROUP* (2003) · Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society · doi:10.1046/j.1095-8339.2003.t01-1-00158.x · Cited by 3,030
Fire as a global ‘herbivore’: the ecology and evolution of flammable ecosystems
BOND, W., & KEELEY, J. (2005) · Trends in Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1016/j.tree.2005.04.025 · Cited by 2,484
Self-citationThe global distribution of ecosystems in a world without fire
Bond, W. J., Woodward, F. I., & Midgley, G. F. (2005) · New Phytologist · doi:10.1111/j.1469-8137.2004.01252.x · Cited by 1,942
The amount of carbon released from peat and forest fires in Indonesia during 1997
Page, S. E., Siegert, F., Rieley, J. O., Boehm, H.-D. V., Jaya, A., & Limin, S. (2002) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature01131 · Cited by 1,885
The Carbon Cycle and Atmospheric CO2 : Natural Variations Archean to Present
Sundquist, E. T., & Broecker, W. S. (1985) · Geophysical monograph · doi:10.1029/gm032 · Cited by 1,659
The Demise of Fire and “Mesophication” of Forests in the Eastern United States
Nowacki, G. J., & Abrams, M. D. (2008) · BioScience · doi:10.1641/b580207 · Cited by 1,316
GEOCARBSULF: A combined model for Phanerozoic atmospheric O2 and CO2
Berner, R. A. (2006) · Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta · doi:10.1016/j.gca.2005.11.032 · Cited by 1,120
ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION OF SOUTHWESTERN PONDEROSA PINE ECOSYSTEMS: A BROAD PERSPECTIVE
Allen, C. D., Savage, M., Falk, D. A., Suckling, K. F., Swetnam, T. W., Schulke, T., Stacey, P. B., Morgan, P., Hoffman, M., & Klingel, J. T. (2002) · Ecological Applications · doi:10.1890/1051-0761(2002)012[1418:erospp]2.0.co;2 · Cited by 945
Positive Feedbacks in the Fire Dynamic of Closed Canopy Tropical Forests
Cochrane, M. A., Alencar, A. A. C., Schulze, M., Souza, C., Nepstad, D. C., Lefebvre, P., & Davidson, E. A. (1999) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.284.5421.1832 · Cited by 916
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Bowman, D. M. J. S., Balch, J. K., Artaxo, P., Bond, W. J., Carlson, J. M., Cochrane, M. A., D’Antonio, C. M., DeFries, R. S., Doyle, J. C., Harrison, S. P., et al. (2009) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1163886 · Cited by 3,351
Self-citationGlobal and Regional Trends and Drivers of Fire Under Climate Change
Jones, M. W., Abatzoglou, J. T., Veraverbeke, S., Andela, N., Lasslop, G., Forkel, M., Smith, A. J. P., Burton, C., Betts, R. A., van der Werf, G. R., et al. (2022) · Reviews of Geophysics · doi:10.1029/2020rg000726 · Cited by 1,332
The human dimension of fire regimes on Earth
Bowman, D. M. J. S., Balch, J., Artaxo, P., Bond, W. J., Cochrane, M. A., D’Antonio, C. M., DeFries, R., Johnston, F. H., Keeley, J. E., Krawchuk, M. A., et al. (2011) · Journal of Biogeography · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2011.02595.x · Cited by 1,230
“Fire regimes can be thought of as a spatially variable template of fire intensity, severity, type, frequency, spatial scale and seasonality, within which biotas have co-evolved (Gill, 1975; Pausas & Keeley, 2009).”
BackgroundSelf-citationFire as an evolutionary pressure shaping plant traits
Keeley, J. E., Pausas, J. G., Rundel, P. W., Bond, W. J., & Bradstock, R. A. (2011) · Trends in Plant Science · doi:10.1016/j.tplants.2011.04.002 · Cited by 1,176
Self-citationPausas, J. G., & Fernández-Muñoz, S. (2012) · Climatic Change · doi:10.1007/s10584-011-0060-6 · Cited by 826
Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Pausas, J. G., & Keeley, J. E.
- Venue
- BioScience
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2009-07
- Volume
- 59
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 593-601
- ISSN
- 0006-3568 (ISSN-L)
- 1525-3244
- OpenAlex
- W2108403435
- Cited by
- 1,226
- References
- 66
- Citations by year
- 2026: 88 · 2025: 97 · 2024: 107 · 2023: 129 · 2022: 89 · 2021: 76 · 2020: 78 · 2019: 73 · 2018: 73 · 2017: 50 · 2016: 60 · 2015: 62 · 2014: 48 · 2013: 63 · 2012: 50
- FWCI
- 37.96
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- BioScience (publishedVersion)
- BioOne Complete (BioOne) (submittedVersion)
- DIGITAL.CSIC (Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Generalitat Valenciana
- Universitat de València
- U.S. Geological Survey
- Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Fire effects on ecosystems
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Rangeland and Wildlife Management
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics
- Keywords
- fire, forest fires, history of life, ecosystem distribution, paleoclimate, paleoatmosphere, fire use, anthropogenic fire, landscape sustainability, biogeography
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review