Global risk of wildfire across timber production systems

2025/05/06 by Christopher G. Bousfield, Oscar Morton, David B. Lindenmayer +3 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Engineering · Environmental Science · #Fire effects on ecosystems #Forest Biomass Utilization and Management #Forest Management and Policy

paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-025-59272-6

openalex publication_date 2025/05/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

Timber is worth 1.5 trillion US Dollars annually with demand rising, but wildfires increasingly threaten production. Plantations occupy 3% of forests globally and produce 33% of the world's timber, but a critical question is whether they are more vulnerable to stand-replacing wildfires than natural production forests. We combine forest management and wildfire data to estimate that 15.7 (14.7-16.7) million hectares of natural production forests and 1.4 (1.26-1.64) million hectares of plantations suffered stand-replacing wildfires between 2015 and 2022. Using statistical matching for 17 countries representing 50% of global production and 75% of burned timber-producing forest, we find plantations in temperate regions were twice as likely to suffer stand-replacing wildfires than natural production forests, including in vital timber-producing nations like China and Russia. Plantations in tropical regions showed no clear effect, with national differences ranging from 75% lower to 58% higher risk of burning. Given increasing global reliance on plantation timber, preventing wildfires through landscape-level planning, fire management, and increased plantation diversity is critical for global wood security.

Citations

• Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020
• Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World: A New Map of Life on Earth
• WorldClim 2: new 1‐km spatial resolution climate surfaces for global land areas
• Statistical matching for conservation science
• Global maps of twenty-first century forest carbon fluxes
• A climate risk analysis of Earth’s forests in the 21st century
• Evaluating the impact of biodiversity offsetting on native vegetation
• Climate change will exacerbate land conflict between agriculture and timber production
• High-Resolution Global Maps of 21st-Century Forest Cover Change

Cited by

• Australia’s native forests can be sustainably managed for wood production together with other important forest values

Discussions

• "We find plantations in temperate regions were twice as likely to suffer stand-replacing #wildfires than natural production forests, including in vital timber-producing nations like China and Russia. [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]