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Spatiotemporal vegetation trends in burned areas of the Americas
Dataset   Open access

Spatiotemporal vegetation trends in burned areas of the Americas

Oswaldo Maillard, Robin Chazdon, Sebastian Aguiar, Bonifacio Mostacedo, Andre Nunes, Cristina Vidal-Riveros and Roberto Vides-Almonacid
Zenodo
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)
2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19544563
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1954456454.67 MBDownloadView
Data Open Access CC BY V4.0

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Abstract

Fire is an essential component of species, ecosystems, and atmospheric dynamics. However, human activity has caused changes in fire regimes over the past two decades. In many cases, the spatial patterns of vegetation change after fire at the landscape scale remain unknown. The aim of this study was to evaluate spatial vegetation trends in burned areas across the Americas (2001–2024), using non-parametric tests and analyzing Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) remote sensing products. Over a period of 24 years, fire activity burned a total area of 429.7 million hectares in 44 countries or territories and 269 ecoregions in the Americas. Regarding fire recurrence, the data indicates that 244.7 Mha (56.9%) burned only once (≤1), while 185.0 Mha (43.1%) burned multiple times (≥2), with certain regions experiencing up to 39 fires. The NDVI trend analysis showed that burned areas with increasing trends (p < 0.05) represented a total of 149.6 Mha (34.8%), primarily in Brazil (54.6 Mha, 12.7%), Argentina (17.8 Mha, 4.2%), the United States (14.4 Mha, 3.4%). In terms of decreasing NDVI trends (p < 0.05), these represented a total of 91.8 Mha (21.37%), primarily in Brazil (29.1 Mha, 6.8%), Canada (23.4 Mha, 5.4%), and the United States (14.2 Mha, 3.3%). The ecoregions with the largest areas showing increasing NDVI trends (p < 0.05) were the Cerrado (33.8 Mha, 7.8%), the Llanos (13.3 Mha, 3.1%) and the Humid Chaco (7 Mha, 1.6%). In contrast, the ecoregions with the largest areas showing decreasing NDVI trends (p < 0.05) were the Dry Chaco (9.2 Mha, 2.1%), the Cerrado (8.6 Mha, 2.0%), and the Boreal Shield (8.3 Mha, 1.9%). In terms of land cover types, savannas (37.2%) exhibited the highest proportions of increasing NDVI trends (p < 0.05), while decreasing trends were also present in savannas (28.0%) and grasslands (22.1%). Identifying spatiotemporal trends in vegetation change after fires is a fundamental step in implementing strategies and public policies to ensure ecological restoration. Moreover, given the high costs of restoration efforts, governments must work together to prevent these ecosystems from burning repeatedly.

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