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Burn them all? Use and efficacy of fire as a tool for grassland restoration

P. A. Thomas,É. Buisson,A. B. Porto,G. Overbeck,S. Müller

Published 2025 in Restoration Ecology

ABSTRACT

Grassland ecosystems have suffered significant degradation and restoring them is fundamental to fight against climate change and biodiversity loss. Fire is an important component in the evolution and management of grasslands worldwide and can potentially be used to restore grasslands. In this paper, we present a systematic literature review to know how fire has been used as a tool in grassland ecological restoration and its efficacy. To do that, we collected the results (positive, negative, or null) of fire treatments considering five restoration objectives: (1) increase biotic diversity, (2) remove woody biomass, (3) control exotic species, (4) promote abiotic changes, and (5) improve ecosystem services, and considering different major grassland types and how fire was employed. We discuss our results by summarizing the data, if fire was applied alone or combined with another technique, and considering major grassland types. Our review shows that fire has been used mainly to restore temperate grasslands in North America. Fire tends to yield more positive results than negative; however, the majority of results are null. Fire is highly effective at removing woody biomass, mainly in temperate and Mediterranean grasslands. Fire is also effective controlling exotic species, mainly when combined with other techniques, but it has low efficacy for exotic species control in tropical and subtropical grasslands. The efficacy in xeric grassland along different objectives is low. We conclude that the successful use of fire as a tool in grassland restoration is highly context‐dependent, varying according to grassland ecosystem type, restoration objectives, and techniques employed.

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