Climate Change and Fire: The Case of Cerrado, the Brazilian Savanna

Stretching across central Brazil, Cerrado, harbours the most floristically diverse savannas in the world. Over the last decades, this biodiversity hotspot has undergone severe changes in land use and currently, less than 20% of its native vegetation cover remains undisturbed. One such disturbance is fire. As a fire-dependent ecosystem, Cerrado’s plant and animal species have developed adaptations to fire, and its occurrence is paramount to the biome’s ecological functioning. Cerrado presents a variety of fire dynamics over its 2 million km2, and thus its drivers and constraints are also diverse and highly dependent on regional context. However, changes in historical fire patterns and the increasing occurrence of wildfires severely damage the biome and risk ecosystem services. Future changes in climate will further promote favourable meteorological conditions for severe and out-of-season wildfires. In this chapter, we discuss these topics with a comprehensive literature review and contribute to understanding fire in Cerrado with novel results regarding seasonal occurrence, trends, and drivers.