Climate impacts
Fire tied to 38% of global forest loss
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
From 2003–2018, 38±9% of annual forest loss was fire-related, and that fraction explained 89±5% of year-to-year variation in global loss rates.
Key findings
Average loss 239×10³ km²/yr; 91±22×10³ km²/yr fire-related. Boreal sparsely populated areas were almost entirely fire-related; some forestry regions ≤10%. Global fraction was stable but fell in Amazon/Indonesia and rose in African tropics.
Methodology
Hansen forest-loss maps were overlaid with burned-area and active-fire detections to estimate fire-related loss globally and regionally, including trends.
Limitations
Overlap of fire detections with loss is not a full causal attribution of every pixel; logging or climate can co-occur with fire, and burned-area products miss some fires.
How this study connects
Role on claims
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From 2003–2018, 38±9% of annual forest loss was fire-related, and that fraction explained 89±5% of year-to-year variation in global loss rates.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
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