A review of wildfires effects across the Gran Chaco region

Abstract

The main objective of this review paper is to synthesize studies related to fire occurrence, the effects of fire on native vegetation at the Gran Chaco scale, and changes in fire regimes, in order to identify current knowledge gaps and limitations. The information collected may contribute to facilitating capacity building and the generation of alliances between national stakeholders, thus enabling a more efficient response to the changing environmental conditions in the following decades. The authors based their work on indexed and non-indexed (grey literature) literature published in the last two decades, utilizing various databases like Web of Science and Scopus, as well as search engines like Google Scholar and science repositories such as ResearchGate. This review consisted of the analysis of 157 papers, out of which 86.62% were peer-reviewed. The authors classified the different papers by topics, countries, and the type of literature to assess the gaps and identify the challenges across the region. The paper is organized into three sections: the first section describes the study region, including its historical, biotic, and socioeconomic characteristics, along with the fire history and fire regimes. The second section provides insights into post-fire effects within the landscape, and the final section discusses these findings in detail and proposes future research lines to address the knowledge gaps identified.