Impacts of fire and prospects for recovery in a tropical peat forest ecosystem

Significance Fire management in tropical forests requires an understanding of the ecological impacts of burn events and the ecosystem’s capacity to recover. We investigate this by tracking multiple ecosystem properties and biodiversity variables over 16 y in a tropical peatland in Indonesia. Compared to unburned areas, burned forest contained fewer trees, was more open and hotter, with more nonforest vegetation, leading to reduced biodiversity. Tracking ecological variables in nonburned forest over time revealed the ecosystem’s sensitivity to recurrent, high-intensity fire within the wider landscape. Some recovery was evident in burned areas within 12 y, but repeated fire risks reversing this trend. While fire prevention is crucial, long-term, context-specific tropical forest restoration is needed to deal with the consequences of fire.

• Publication year

  2024

• Venue

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

• Publication date

  2024-04-15

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1073/pnas.2307216121PMID 38621126PMCID 11047076
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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