Diverse wildfire impacts on river flows across the globe
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Grillakis, Manolis
Voulgarakis, Apostolos
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Forest fires can significantly impact the hydrological regime of river basins, affecting short-term flood propensity and long-term water resource availability until vegetation is reestablished. While basin-level studies have extensively investigated these impacts, regional and global-scale assessments remain limited. Here we use a comprehensive global dataset of river discharge observations to systematically assess the hydrological response to wildfires for a range of hydrologically homogenous world regions and biomes. Our analysis reveals contrasting hydrological impacts by region, with high-latitude discharge ratios declining by 7.5% and 16% in the first and second year after wildfire, respectively, while Northern mid-latitude regions showing a marginal 3.3% median increase in discharge ratio the first-year post-fire. Sub-tropical and equatorial regions display negative and positive effects, respectively. We further discuss how potential ecological and hydroclimatic factors, along with human river and watershed management, shape these diverse hydrological responses per hydroclimatic region.
Date Issued
2025-06-04
Date Acceptance
2025-05-27
Citation
Communications Earth & Environment, 2025, 6
ISSN
2662-4435
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Journal / Book Title
Communications Earth & Environment
Volume
6
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Identifier
10.1038/s43247-025-02419-6
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
433
Date Publish Online
2025-06-04