Sponsors

Imma Oliveras Menor, UMR AMAP (Botany & Modelling of Plants and Vegetation), Research Institute for Development, Montpellier, France

 

Short Biography:  Imma Oliveras Menor is Research Director in disturbance ecology at the Institute of Research for the Development (IRD, France), Senior Researcher at the Environmental Change Institute (ECI), University of Oxford and Visiting Associate Professor at the Universidade do Estado de Mato Grosso (Brazil). Her research focuses on how ecosystems are responding to global change, with a particular focus to changes in drought and wildfire regimes in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Her interdisciplinary research group uses approaches from plant physiology, functional trait ecology, ecosystems science and remote sensing to integrate mechanisms and processes at several ecological scales. Recently she has become more interested on the challenge on how to generate science-based management approaches that generate nature recovery such as Integrated Fire Management. 

Short Summary: Tropical and subtropical ecosystems include fire-sensitive and fire-prone landscapes on Earth that co-exist next to each other and sustain the livelihood of over 40% of the Earth’s population. In this presentation I will give nad overview of the ecological, climatic, and societal dimensions of fire in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world, highlighting how shifting fire regimes interact with deforestation, land-use change, and climate variability to reshape biodiversity and carbon dynamics. Beyond natural drivers, we examine the cultural and practical use of fire by Indigenous and local communities—practices that have sustained some landscapes for centuries—and contrast these with modern fire exclusion policies that often disrupt ecological balance and increase vulnerability to catastrophic wildfires. I will discuss the cascading feedbacks between wildfire, atmospheric processes, and human livelihoods, and why wildfires in these regions are not just local disturbances but global drivers of change. I will close the presentation with a reflection on how we should move from wildfire risk management approaches toward integrated fire management that takes into account the social, cultural, and ecological dimensions associated to fire in the territory.