What is it about?
Tree planting is widely promoted as a climate solution, but establishing forests on previously non-forested land, known as afforestation, can also impact wildfire activity. Here, we compared wildfire occurrence and burned area before and after this land-use change across the world’s temperate regions, and we found that both indicators increased overall, but the effects strongly depends on the regional landscape.
Featured Image
Photo by Matt Howard on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Our findings show that planting forests can change wildfire activity in different directions and magnitude. This new evidence challenges the assumption that tree planting delivers consistent climate benefits, as increased fire activity could offset part of the carbon captured by new forests and affect wood production in certain regions. As tree planting programmes expand and the climate becomes warmer, our findings can help guide where and how plantations are established to achieve lasting environmental benefits.
Perspectives
Working on this meant collaborating with people I admire and now get to call colleagues. It also challenged me a lot. I had to learn new things, question the data and my own analyses, and try again many many times. I am forever grateful for everything I learned along the way, and especially to Susana for trusting me to lead this work. I hope our work sparks the same curiosity in you as it did in me.
Dr. Irene Repeto Deudero
University of Eastern Finland
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Afforestation reshapes wildfire activity across global temperate biomes, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, November 2026, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2623623123.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
