Human land occupation regulates the effect of the climate on the burned area of the Brazilian Cerrado

Segura-Garcia, Carlota, Bauman, David, S. Arruda, Vera L., Alencar, Ane A. C. and Oliveras Menor, Imma (2024) Human land occupation regulates the effect of the climate on the burned area of the Brazilian Cerrado. Communications Earth & Environment, 5 (1). ISSN 2662-4435

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Abstract

Human activities and climate change are transforming fire regimes globally. The interaction between these two drivers is poorly understood, yet critical if we aim at predicting how biomes will respond to novel fire regimes. In the Brazilian Cerrado, altered fire regimes are threatening its unique biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Here, using geospatial data for the period 1985-2020 and a causal inference framework to design Bayesian statistical models, we demonstrate that a larger human presence in the landscape (≥40% land-use area) reduces the Cerrado’s burned area and hinders its responsiveness to climate; while climatic effects only become apparent in landscapes with little human presence, where hotter and drier conditions increase burned area. Finally, we find spatially heterogeneous burned area trends over time, with increases associated to climate change in landscapes that have remained mostly intact, and decreases caused by anthropic expansion. Both diverging trends have important implications for the conservation of the Cerrado as land-use expansion and climate change continue to unfold.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data availability The climate data used in this study are publicly available from ERA5-Land Monthly Averaged at https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/dataset/ecmwf-reanalysis-v5-land, Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data version 2.0 at https://data.chc.ucsb.edu/products/CHIRPS-2.0/, and TerraClimate at https://www.climatologylab.org/terraclimate.html. The land use data are publicly available from MapBiomas collection 6.0 at https://brasil.mapbiomas.org/en/colecoes-mapbiomas/. The burned area data are publicly available from MapBiomas Fogo Collection 1.0 at https://brasil.mapbiomas.org/en/colecoes-mapbiomas/. Finally, the shapefiles used for protected area data (conservation units and indigenous lands) are publicly available from the Ministério de Meio Ambiente do Brasil http://www.mma.gov.br/areas-protegidas/cadastro-nacional-de-ucs.
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
Related URLs:	https://www.scopus.com/pages/publication...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	08 Jun 2026 15:35
Last Modified:	09 Jun 2026 11:05
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103317
DOI:	10.1038/s43247-024-01521-5

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