Wildfires are becoming larger, more frequent and more severe in many parts of the world. In Mediterranean-type regions, extreme wildfires that once seemed exceptional now return every year. According to Copernicus data, over 670,000 hectares burned Spain and Portugal in 2025, mostly during August. Nearly 400,000 hectares burned in Spain alone, the largest area since these records began.
These extreme events have led many to wonder whether climate change is the main cause, but the answer is not straightforward. Certainly, climate change favours more acute fire weather conditions and extends fire seasons, but it is not the only driver. Other factors such as the topography, the distribution and identity of fuels across the landscape must be also given full consideration. In order to understand today’s wildfires, we need to look closely at the landscapes we have created.
Since the nineteenth century, large-scale planting initiatives spread across the Mediterranean basin aimed at increasing production, offering regulation services and boosting economic development. The legacy of those afforestation programs in Spain left a profound imprint: over 5 million hectares were forested, mostly with pine species. In addition, rural abandonment has since increased the amount and continuity of biomass, creating fuel-rich landscapes that are now especially prone to wildfires. This raises some key questions: how do different fuel types shape fire behaviour and post-fire recovery? And, can management reduce fire severity in these plantation-dominated landscapes?
Lessons from the wildfires in Spain
We tested the above questions in three recent wildfires across Spain. Here, we found that pine plantations exhibited higher fire severity and poorer post-fire recovery than oak forests, mixed woodlands, or shrublands. While these other vegetation types recovered, planted areas remained barren after one year, resembling neither the original ecosystem nor a functioning plantation.
And that is not all. We found that pine plantations can also “raise the stakes” for their neighbours. Across all three wildfires, surrounding vegetation burned more severely near pine plantations compared to the same stands found further away.
However, not all plantations burned the same way. We identified a tipping point at approximately 440 pine trees per hectare, above which tree density resulted in a marked increase in fire severity. Meanwhile, fire impacts were far less severe in those plantations where fuel density and continuity had been recently managed.
This shows that, in pine plantations, management can make the difference. Practices like thinning, pruning, or selective cutting can help break up fuel loads and continuity, effectively reducing fire impacts. In other words, the difference between a managed and an abandoned plantation could also mean the difference between a controllable wildfire and an extremely difficult one.
Challenges and opportunities in a changing climate
In the past, tree plantations played a crucial role in the European economy and shaped much of the landscape that we see today. Now, these plantations are at risk of becoming hotspots of high fire severity. Our research offers evidence for those working in forest management that planted pine forests do not burn like to other vegetation types, including natural pine forests. Instead, fuel type, connectivity and stand density can strongly influence fire severity and how ecosystems may rebound afterwards.
This is important because it implies that strong investments in forest management are no longer optional. Promoting more diverse landscapes as well as managing tree plantations are both realistic and effective strategies. These measures would generate tangible benefits for society in terms of fire protection and reduction of forest fire emissions, strengthening regional approaches while complementing (although not replacing) global efforts to mitigate climate change.
Implementing these measures will come with high costs and logistical challenges, but it also opens the door to making advancements in sustainable forestry, creating pathways to address the consequences of rural abandonment, and help fostering landscapes where plantations are integrated into a more balanced mosaic of productive and functional ecosystems.
Tree planting as a climate mitigation strategy carries significant risks if it is not carefully planned, particularly in a warming and fire-prone world. Unlike climate or topography, fuel is something we can control. Rethinking where and how we plant trees, and specially, what we do with these plantations afterwards, is an essential condition to create more fire-resilient landscapes, and ultimately, to learning to live with fire.
Read the full article, ‘The legacy of pine plantations on fire severity’ in Journal of Applied Ecology.
