Click the link to read the article on the Carbon Brief website (Orla Dwyer). Here’s an excerpt:
May 2, 2025
Forests around the world are taking longer to recover from severe wildfires – potentially indicating forest decline, according to a new study.
The research, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, finds a “significant increase” in the severity of forest fires from 2001-10 to 2010-21 – especially in western North America, parts of Siberia and south-eastern Australia. It also finds that recovery from large fires has become “more difficult” for forests in recent years, particularly in the boreal forests of the far-northern latitudes. Furthermore, fewer than one-third of all forests studied recovered successfully within seven years of a “megafire” – a broad term used to refer to extreme fires. A “surprising discovery” was that fire severity had the largest impact on forest recovery – even more than climate change, one of the study authors tells Carbon Brief.