Climate-driven increases in wildfire projected to affect European forest types differently

Abstract Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and size of large uncontrollable fires. The impact of this trend on forest vegetation is still poorly understood, especially in areas not commonly subject to recurrent fires, i.e. in areas where tree species may not be adapted to fire and where flammability may increase as warming decreases moisture. Here we use recent advances in remote sensing to simulate burned area development until the end of the century under different climate scenarios. We then combine these projections with an European forest resources model to assess the impact of projected fire regimes on forests in three major biomes in Europe (i.e. Mediterranean, temperate and boreal forests, here represented by three countries: Spain, Germany and Sweden). Burned area was projected to increase in all regions in the 21st century, with the biggest increase and highest absolute damage in the Mediterranean region under the most severe climate scenario. Furthermore, we found that future fire disproportionately affects temperate forests, where a higher level of damage occurs for the same relative increase in burned area, compared to the other biomes. This was mostly due to the combination of increasingly favourable weather conditions for fire and large standing biomass, which drove the increased susceptibility of temperate regions to emerging wildfire regimes. Our findings call for mainstreaming fire and fuel management strategies into forest planning to increase resilience to fires, particularly in temperate regions with limited past fire occurrence and a projected increase in favourable fire weather.