The tropics are home to most of the world's biodiversity and are currently the frontier for human settlement. Tropical ecosystems are being converted to agricultural and other land uses at unprecedented rates. Land conversion and maintenance almost always rely on fire and, because of this, fire is now more prevalent in the tropics than anywhere else on Earth. Despite pervasive fire, human settlement and threatened biodiversity, there is little comprehensive information available on fire and its effects in tropical ecosystems.

Tropical deforestation, especially in rainforests, has been widely documented for many years. Forests are cut down and allowed to dry before being burned to remove biomass and release nutrients to grow crops. However, fires do not always stop at the borders of cleared forests. Tremendously damaging fires are increasingly spreading into forests that were never evolutionarily prepared for wild fires. The largest fires on the planet in recent decades have occurred in tropical forests and burned millions of hectares in several countries.

The numerous ecosystems of the tropics have differing levels of fire resistance, resilience or dependence. At present, there is little appreciation of the seriousness of the wild fire situation in tropical rainforests but there is even less understanding of the role that fire plays in the ecology of many fire adapted tropical ecosystems, such as savannas, grasslands and other forest types.

Fire in the tropics

Fire in the tropics
Fire and fire ecology: Concepts and principles
Fire and fire ecology: Concepts and principles
Global overview of fire in the tropics
Overview: Global fire regime conditions, threats, and opportunities for fire management in the tropics
Fire in the Australian tropics
Fire-driven land cover change in Australia and W.D. Jackson's theory of the fire ecology of southwest Tasmania
Fires in Australia's tropical savannas: Interactions with biodiversity, global warming, and exotic biota
Aboriginal fire use in Australian tropical savannas: Ecological effects and management lessons
Fire in the African tropics
Fire ecology and fire politics in Mali and Madagascar
Climate change and wildland fires in Mozambique
Fire in the Asian tropics
Tropical peatland fires in Southeast Asia
Fire ecology and management of seasonal evergreen forests in mainland Southeast Asia
Fire behavior and fire effects across the forest landscape of continental Southeast Asia
Forest fire regimes and their ecological effects in seasonally dry tropical ecosystems in the Western Ghats, India
Fire and land use effects on biodiversity in the southern Sumatran wetlands
Fire in the South American tropics
Fire, land use, land cover dynamics, and climate change in the Brazilian Amazon
Fires in the cerrado, the Brazilian savanna
The role of fire in the vegetation dynamics of upland savannas of the Venezuelan Guayana
Pattern and process: Fire-initiated grass invasion at Amazon transitional forest edges
Fire in the Central American tropics
Fire in the páramo ecosystems of Central and South America
Pan-tropical fire
The consequences of fire for the fauna of humid tropical forests
Fire in tropical pine ecosystems
Changing fire regimes in tropical montane cloud forests: a global synthesis.