Global wildfire trends: myths and realities

What is it about?

We carried out a detailed analysis of global and regional data on fire occurrence, severity and its impacts on society, revealing major misconceptions about wildfire and its social and economic impacts. We found that global area burned has little overall change over past decades, despite some notable regional increases. Currently, around 4% of the global vegetated land surface is affected by vegetation fires each year. There is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago. Direct fatalities from fire and economic losses also show no clear trends over the past three decades. There are, however, some alarming trends in area burned in some regions of the world, such as boreal Canada and the western USA. The central issue of the wildfire 'problem' is not the occurrence of fire, but the way we humans interact with fire.

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Why is it important?

Wildfire is widely perceived as getting worse or increasing although trends differ in different parts of the world. The aim of our work was to identify misconceptions about fire and provide a more balanced view about the extent and impacts of fire at the global scale. Fire is a integral part of the Earth system and a fuller understanding of its trends and impacts is essential to allow a more sustainable coexistence of human societies with fire.