Project description
Amazon fire resilience
Forests that historically rarely burned, are now increasingly vulnerable to fires. Places such as the Amazon are experiencing more frequent and severe fires, which not only cause immense local damage but also worsen air pollution and add to global CO2 levels. The ERC-funded FiRes project aims to explore how these vulnerable ecosystems withstand and recover from fires. By focusing on the Amazon, the project will explore the long-term (up to 10 000 years) past, present and future impacts of fires. The results will deepen our understanding of the entire process from the initial disruption by fire to how the ecosystem eventually recovers. This information will help develop better strategies to protect fire-unadapted forests in a more fire-prone future.
Objective
The challenge. Despite a global decline in burned area, total CO2 emissions from fires have increased due to more fires in previously largely fire-free and therefore fire-sensitive forests. Existing knowledge of fire impacts comes from fire-adapted ecosystems and cannot be easily translated to fire-sensitive forests. Particularly the Amazon has seen recent increase in fire frequency and intensity, with devastating local effects on the forest, regional-scale air pollution, and global CO2 rise.
Aim. I aim to understand fire resilience – i.e. resistance to fire and post-fire recovery – of fire-sensitive ecosystems by studying the Amazon. I will assess fire resilience at multiple temporal scales: 1) the past to understand long-term recovery and full disturbance-recovery cycles, 2) the present to experimentally understand mechanisms underlying fire damage and mortality, and 3) the future to Amazon resilience to future fire regimes.
Approach. I will integrate across temporal scales and their different disciplines. For past fire resilience (last 10,000 y), I will use paleo pollen and charcoal records. For present fire resilience, I will build a monitoring network in burned forests and perform a unique fire experiment. For future resilience, I will use the previous steps to adapt a dynamic forest model and simulate future fire resilience. I will quantify fire regime as fire frequency and intensity, which are fundamentally different aspects of fire regime but rarely tested simultaneously. To assess how climate drives fire resilience, I will study seasonally dry and wet evergreen tropical forests. To understand mechanisms underlying tree mortality and recovery, I will use physiological measurements and plant functional traits to understand species and community resilience in the past, present and future.
Impact. This project will advance our understanding of resilience of fire-sensitive ecosystems, and provide the knowledge needed for future safeguarding of these ecosystems
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences sociology demography mortality
- engineering and technology environmental engineering air pollution engineering
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences environmental sciences pollution
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology ecosystems
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
6708 PB Wageningen
Netherlands
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