Fire asymmetries across global borders reveal distinct ecological governance and cooperation priorities

Abstract International borders divide governance systems but often cut across continuous ecosystems, creating potential mismatches in fire management. We analyze 277 terrestrial international border pairs using a 21-year satellite fire record and integrate fire burden, relative cross-border asymmetry, ecological value, institutional challenge and cooperation challenge. Border fire burden broadly reproduces global fire geography, with the highest activity concentrated in major fire-prone regions, but our analysis shows that management implications differ markedly among borders. Among 128 active-fire pairs, fire burden and proportional asymmetry are weakly negatively associated and identify partly distinct priorities. Ecological value further reshapes priority geographies, while institutional and cooperation constraints define different governance contexts. Multivariate analysis separates these borders into operational profiles with contrasting management needs. Here, we show that transboundary fire priority cannot be inferred from fire activity alone but emerges from distinct combinations of fire, ecological and governance conditions, requiring border-specific approaches to monitoring, conservation and cooperation.