Environments affected by fire

Abstract

Fire is an important element of earth system. It is considered a “global herbivore”, a force of nature that shaped the ecosystems and made us “humans” and survive until today. Despite this, nowadays the society understands fire as an evil with extremely negative impacos on the ecosystems. Fire has an important ecological agent, however, can induce soil degradation, especially after high severity fires and recurrent fires. The current sate of our forests, management strategies (e.g. fire suppression, monocultures plantations) and the increasing severity and length of drought spells as consequence of climate change. These unwanted high severity and recurrent fires have detrimental impacts on soil properties and induce a long term degradation (e.g reduction of soil fertility and erosion rates increase). Post-fire restoration is a common practice to reduce erosion rates, nevertheless, these should only be applied in areas affected by high severity fires, since normally, in areas burned at low to moderate fire severity, and vegetation recovers fast. In this chapter we will review the impacts of fire on soil properties and the post-fire restoration strategies used.