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.
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.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Computational / modelling — Hansen forest-loss maps overlaid with burned-area and active-fire detections
- N
- Global annual forest loss 2003–2018
- Population
- Global forest-loss pixels, 2003–2018
- Outcome
- Fire-related loss was 38±9% of annual forest loss and explained 89±5% of year-to-year variation in global loss rates
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Fire tied to 38% of global forest loss
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
Where was almost all forest loss fire-related?
In sparsely populated parts of the boreal region, almost all forest loss was fire‐related, whereas in regions dominated by forestry, such as the Southeastern United States, Scandinavia and parts of China, the fire‐related fraction was typically 10% or less.
Did the global fire-related fraction trend?
The global average fraction of fire‐related forest loss remained stable over the study period.
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.
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