Linking fire and climate: interactions with land use, vegetation, and soil

Literature shows that at a global scale, fire activity increased from the Last Glacial Maximum to the present. There is incremental evidence indicating that climate defines the regional boundary conditions for fire. Human influence on ignitions depends on climate and has, since prehistoric times, resulted in significant changes on vegetation and soil, some of which require greater attention in the light of anthropogenic climate change. Climatic conditions have been used to identify regions where fire patterns are (i) human controlled, (ii) constrained by fuel and (iii) limited by rainfall seasonality. At regional and local scales, the fire–climate relationship is distorted by the interactions of fire, vegetation, and land use, and this, combined with annual to decadal climatic variability since late Holocene, results in high spatial and temporal variations in fire regimes.