Pyrodiversity in a warming world: research challenges and opportunities

"Pyrodiversity in a warming world: research challenges and opportunities"

This article was published on Aug. 15, 2022, in the journal Current Landscape Ecology Reports. This article is available to download for free from the USDA Forest Service’s Treesearch database.

Abstract

Purpose of Review
Climate change will continue to alter spatial and temporal variation in fire characteristics, or pyrodiversity. The causes of pyrodiversity and its consequences for biological communities are emerging as a promising research area with great potential for understanding and predicting global change. We reviewed the literature related to the causes and consequences of pyrodiversity over the 3-year period 2019–2021 to identify emerging themes and innovations.

Recent Findings
Key innovations include multi-scale analyses of pyrodiversity, a focus on mechanisms underlying single-species responses to pyrodiversity, investigating how pyrodiversity influences community stability and beta-diversity, and novel, integrative approaches for measuring pyrodiversity.

Summary
Pyrodiversity research is still maturing, and will benefit from exploration of multi-scale, gradient analysis of integrated (multi-measure) pyrodiversity metrics, an increased focus on how climate change may influence pyrodiversity across different systems, and a stronger framework for operational pyrodiversity within the context of land management. We suggest that research focusing on pyrodiversity could be generalized to include “turbadiversity,” or the cumulative patterns of heterogeneity produced by multiple types of disturbances (i.e., not just fire).

Keywords: pyrodiversity;  biodiversity; climate change; multi-scale; fire management; landscape ecology

Citation

Jones, G. M., J. Ayars, S. A. Parks, H. E. Chmura, S. A. Cushman, and J. S. Sanderlin. "Pyrodiversity in a warming world: Research challenges and opportunities." Current Landscape Ecology Reports (2022): 1-19.