NEWS
Fire control harms biodiversity
in Brazilian savannah
Rodrigo de Oliveira Andrade
Current Address: Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Sao Paulo, Brazil
Web Address: http://pucsp.academia.edu/
Reprinted From: http://bit.ly/2tbSeL9
S
ÃO PAULO - Policies that prevent
fires caused by people in El Cerrado
(the Brazilian savannah) lead to bio-
diversity losses because they promote
the expansion of forests with dense veg-
etation.
This is the main conclusion of a study
that examined impacts over the last 30
years in parts of El Cerrado that belong
to São Paulo state.
The researchers used satellite images to
determine changes in vegetation, and
in the amount of carbon dioxide ab-
sorbed in different areas of a small city
in El Cerrado the commune Aguas de
Santa Barbara.
They confirmed that a policy banning
human-caused fires between 1986 and
2015 encouraged the growth of denser
forest.
This led to an increase, by 1.2 tons, of
the carbon stored in both vegetation
and soil in those areas since 1986.
But at the same time, they found a re-
duction in the diversity of plants and
ants in the same period, by 27 per cent
and 35 per cent respectively. According
to the researchers, these findings apply
to other animals too, so impacts can
also be expected for birds, reptiles and
amphibians.
“Suppression
allowed forest to en-
croach upon savan-
na ecosystems which
might cause massive
loss of species that
live in this sort of
vegetation,” -
William Hoffmann
Grassroots
Vol 18
No 1
Figure 1: Panoramic view of El Cerrado. Credit: Wikimedia
The El Cerrado is an area with open
vegetation, shrubs and grasses. The
chemical processes that influence bio-
diversity by stimulating the sprouting
and blossoming of plants, fruiting and
seed dispersal, are regulated partly by
fires.
Giselda Durigan, forestry engineer at
the Forestry Institute of São Paulo, and
lead-author of the study, published
in the journal Science Advances, says
ceasefire policies might be beneficial
for Amazonia and the Atlantic Forest
but not for El Cerrado. This is an area
that needs fire in order to maintain its
animal and vegetable species diversity,
she explains.
“The rise of forest with dense vegeta-
tion, with tall trees that are close to one
another, has decreased the light in-
cidence in that region”, Durigan tells
SciDev.Net. “When a fire is eliminat-
ed, the chemical processes needed to
maintain the [natural] environment are
affected.”
says that while ceasefire is beneficial
for carbon dioxide mitigation, “[the] El
Cerrado has a range of specific charac-
teristics that are the result of vegetation
adapting to the fire”.
According to Hoffmann, excessive fire
suppression might be devastating to
the species that depend on natural
savanna habitats, both in Brazil and in
other regions of the world such as parts
of Africa.
“Suppression allowed forest to en-
croach upon savanna ecosystems, which
might cause massive loss of species that
live in this sort of vegetation,” he points
out.
Lucíola Lannes, also a biologist, at the
engineering faculty of São Paulo State
University in Brazil, says: “the work
shows that carbon dioxide mitigation
policies that favour fire suppressions
cannot be a priority conservation policy
in El Cerrado”.
Biologist William Hoffmann, from North
Carolina State University in the United
States, and a co-author of the study,
March 2018
08