Editorial overview: “Fire. Prevention, management and challenges”

Fire is a natural element of the ecosystem, but it can have virulent social, economic, and environmental impacts when uncontrolled. It is a phenomenon that needs to be understood because it is not possible to erase. Therefore, it is vital to mitigate the unwanted effects produced and keep using it as a tool for landscape management as we are doing for millennia. This knowledge cannot be forgotten. Especially in a context where high severity wildfires are becoming more recurrent, we need to understand how to manage fire and use it as a “good servant”. Prevention measures are essential to reduce high-severity wildfires, and more efforts are needed to avoid ecosystem services loss and invest in postfire restoration measures. In this special issue, we covered several topics related to wildfire risk, preventive measures, remote sensing techniques, greenhouse gas emissions, impacts on soil and water quality, postfire management, and restoration. All this knowledge is of utmost importance to deal with fire on different ecosystems in a fast-changing world.