Review article: Understanding the placement of fire emissions from the Brazilian Cerrado biome in the atmospheric carbon budget

da Veiga, Renata Moura; von Randow, Celso; Burton, Chantelle; Kelley, Douglas; Cardoso, Manoel; Morelli, Fabiano

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2348

Preprints

https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2348

Preprints

06 Aug 2024

| 06 Aug 2024

Review article: Understanding the placement of fire emissions from the Brazilian Cerrado biome in the atmospheric carbon budget

Renata Moura da Veiga, Celso von Randow, Chantelle Burton, Douglas Kelley, Manoel Cardoso, and Fabiano Morelli

Abstract. Estimating fire emissions in the Brazilian Cerrado requires a comprehensive approach, combining data, fire and vegetation modelling techniques, and policy. Although high quantities of global fire emissions come from the Cerrado, research in this area is still overlooked when compared to other savanna countries. This study systematically reviewed 69 papers on fire emissions from the Cerrado. The aim was to provide insights into the placement of the Cerrado in the atmospheric carbon budget and support improved estimation of the Biome’s carbon balance. Our review finds that, in the Cerrado, studies often focus on quantifying fire dynamics parameters and emissions, and that a holistic approach is required to estimate fire emissions, which is hindered due to the difficulty in valuing the qualitative aspects of fire. Evidence suggests a rise in interest in understanding fire emissions in the Cerrado, reflected in the increased number of studies throughout the years. More research is required to understand the aspects of fire dynamics in the Cerrado, how these reflect fire emissions locally and globally and potential mitigation activities. This could be achieved by including fire management representation in land surface models and using observational data to constrain and assess their utility.

Received: 24 Jul 2024 – Discussion started: 06 Aug 2024

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Journal article(s) based on this preprint

23 Sep 2025

Review article: Fire emissions in the Brazilian Cerrado – dynamics, estimates, management, and their role in the global carbon budget

Renata Moura da Veiga, Celso von Randow, Chantelle Burton, Douglas I. Kelley, Manoel Cardoso, and Fabiano Morelli

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 25, 3581–3601, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-3581-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-3581-2025, 2025

Short summary

Renata Moura da Veiga, Celso von Randow, Chantelle Burton, Douglas Kelley, Manoel Cardoso, and Fabiano Morelli

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on egusphere-2024-2348', Anonymous Referee #1, 18 Sep 2024
General comments
The main goal of this manuscript is to perform a systematic and comprehensive literature review on fire emissions in the Brazilian Cerrado, and put these emissions into perspective of the global carbon budget. Given that Brazil is the largest contributor to land use (LU) emissions, the role of fire in LU emissions, and Cerrado as the largest contributor to Brazil's annual burned area, this assessment is relevant and of interest to the scientific community. To my knowledge, there is no such assessment yet, and this study could potentially contribute significantly to understanding the current state of fire emission estimates in the biome and identify research gaps. Unfortunately, I don't think the authors were successful in doing so. I will detail my main concerns with this manuscript below:
The research question. The question that the authors use to guide their review process is the following: "How compiling published material on fire emission in natural areas of the Cerrado can provide a better understanding of the placement of these emissions in the atmospheric carbon budget?". This question is not mentioned again in the manuscript and it is left unanswered in the Discussion. Additionally, its formulation is not in line with the main goals of the manuscript. For instance, the question refers to "natural areas of the Cerrado". If this were to mean areas of intact native vegetation, the authors would need to provide a keyword for this, as the vast majority of papers that are mentioned do not focus on natural areas, and are often estimates for the entire biome or specific land cover types. I also believe that "global carbon budget" would be more appropriate than "atmospheric carbon budget".

At no point in the manuscript, are the 69 papers disclosed. This is a major concern, as the papers found through the PRISMA method are never listed. The authors refer to many papers throughout the text, but the reader does not know if these papers are those included in the literature review, or just part of a discussion. There is no list, even in Supplementary Material, of the papers, along with their respective topic (fire dynamics parameters, emission estimates, and fire management and policy) and study design (empirical, review, and perspective). Moreover, these classifications are explained in the Results section (e.g. lines 210-214) rather than in Methods. The authors also divide the papers according to study area (Global, Tropical region, South America, Brazil, Cerrado) which is never mentioned in Methods.

Given that the paper is about fire emissions, there is a lot of discussion about fire patterns and drivers. There are many papers, especially in the "fire dynamics parameters" category, that do not evaluate emissions. Although burned area and fire intensity are parameters used to estimate emissions, discussing fire patterns and their climatic and human drivers should not be a main focus of this literature review. The authors also select burned area as the sole parameter to estimate fire emissions in Figure 5 (Section 3.1), to then explain how Fire Radiative Power (FRP) can also be used in the last paragraph of Section 3.2. This shows a lack of grasp of some of these concepts: for instance, the authors introduce FRP in Section 3.2 as if it was not the same parameter as "fire intensity" in Section 3.1; they also mention that "FRP considers (...) area affected by fire" and that it uses "MODIS active fires are inputs" which is, at best, vey badly worded.

The manuscript needs to be substantially re-organized. The Introduction fails to provide background to the importance of fire emissions in the Cerrado, both in the national and global context. The role of fire emissions in the global carbon cycle/budget should also be highlighted, along with the role of Brazil in the LULC emissions as the highest emitter (see the Global Carbon Budget 2023). Information on how carbon emissions are estimated worldwide should be included (e.g. what data and methods are usually employed), so that the reader can better understand results found in the literature review. Moreover, as a tropical savanna, the Introduction could also leverage on information from other tropical savannas worldwide. As mentioned previously, the Methods section is missing key information (e.g. that the analysis only considers papers up to 2022, or how the trend line in Figure 2 is estimated and its significance level), and in the Results section is hard to distinguish between description of papers found through the review process and discussion (e.g. lines 163-165, 272-278, 279-282, 330-333, 375-379, 396-398, 402-405, 441-460). Lastly, the Discussion should include limitations on current methods and estimates, especially those found in the review process.

Most importantly, the authors fail to deliver on their main goal as it is not clear the importance of Cerrado's emissions to the global carbon budget. The authors also fail to conclude what is obvious for the reader: that there is barely any literature on fire emissions in the Cerrado, especially if comparing with other biomes worldwide. They also do not discuss the mitigation potential for Brazil in LU emissions, and the impact and importance of such policy changes in keeping to the 1.5ºC goal (see Roe et al., 2019 in Nature Climate Change).

Specific comments
Line 441: I believe the authors are confusing emission factors with carbon emissions.

Line 327: "low fuel moisture and low flammable biomass" if there is low fuel moisture, there should be high flammability. Please clarify.

Line 380: "GFED relies on the study done by (...) to quantify emissions worldwide" GFED doesn't rely on Van Der Werf et al. (2017). Its fourth version is described in that paper. Moreover, "small burned areas detection derived from MODIS" seems to entail that GFED did not rely on MODIS, which is incorrect. Please clarify how small burned areas were included in the GFED dataset (which also relies on active fire information).

Line 558-559: how are fire emissions a sink of CO2?

Technical corrections
Standardize units throughout the manuscript (e.g. Pg year-1 or Pg per year)

Please write biome in lowercase.

Line 502: "we found" should be "Van Der Werf et al. (2017) found"

Authors' contribution is missing an author.

Either "burnt area" or "burned area". Both are used in the manuscript.

Figure 3 has 25 papers in the Cerrado, while the text mentions 26 (line 182).

Figure 3 and 4 could be merged into one.

Figure captions need to be much more detailed.

Line 489: dos Santos et al. (2021) found that fire management reduced LDS in 3 PAs of the Cerrado, not in "areas of the Cerrado", this should be clear.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2348-RC1
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Renata Veiga, 19 Nov 2024
  
  The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2024/egusphere-2024-2348/egusphere-2024-2348-AC1-supplement.pdf
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2348-AC1
RC2:
'Comment on egusphere-2024-2348', Anonymous Referee #2, 08 Oct 2024

The authors provide a comprehensive review of the literature on emissions from fires in the Brazilian Cerrado biome. The article effectively discusses fire dynamics parameters, emission estimates, and fire management and policy, which are critical not only for the scientific community but also for various sectors involved in fire mitigation, adaptation strategies, and control efforts. Given Cerrado’s strategic importance within South America and its role in the global carbon budget, the article addresses relevant issues with broad implications. While the article is innovative and presents a novel assessment of the Brazilian Cerrado, I believe that some aspects of the scientific question were explored in a rather superficial manner.
Below are specific points I would like to raise:
Introduction and Brazilian Cerrado biome characterization: The introduction provides a useful overview of the geographical, seasonal, vegetative, and emission characteristics of the Cerrado. However, it overlooks two crucial aspects: (1) The Cerrado’s role in water resource availability in Brazil, as it is responsible for surface water in 8 of the 12 major Brazilian hydrographic regions, and how climate change and extreme fire events could impact the hydrological cycle. (2) The socio-biodiversity of the Cerrado, shaped by its peoples’ socio-cultural relationships with nature, is highly relevant when considering the connection between ancestral knowledge and integrated fire management. I believe these points would enhance the introduction.
Fire-climate feedback loop: In the introduction, you discuss how fire and climate regulate one another and can form a positive feedback loop. However, there is no mention of the interaction between droughts and heat waves, which amplifies fire risks. Recent research highlights the importance of understanding compound drought, heatwaves, and fires, which I consider essential to this work's context.
Distribution of studies: You classify the studies by location range, from global to local scales, indicating that the number of studies is higher for the Cerrado and global levels. I was curious about the spatial distribution of the institutions involved in these studies. Are they predominantly Brazilian or located in the Cerrado region? In other words, who is driving research on fire impacts in the Cerrado?
The decline in publications in 2022: The sharp drop in publications in 2022 is striking. Could this reflect a shift in focus toward another biome, such as the Pantanal? A simple analysis of publication trends in other biomes could provide insight. Also, might the pandemic have affected research outputs? While I understand this is not the article’s focus, the significant drop warrants more than a brief mention.
Critical fire year in 2020: Your findings show that 2020 was the most critical year in terms of burned area. Is there any information on what caused this increase? Could it be related to drought and exacerbated heat, or perhaps changes in government policy or legislation? This point deserves further discussion in the text.
Fire management focus: You identify that only 8% of papers focused on fire management, and state that "this review captured no studies quantifying the amount of fire emissions mitigated by fire management in the Cerrado." This seems to contradict the statement that "three prominent topics identified were fire dynamics, emission estimates, and fire management". I believe adjusting the scientific question or the criteria for topic selection is necessary. Additionally, while there may be no studies on integrated fire management reducing emissions in Brazil, may research outside Brazil, such as in Australia have shown this potential? Expanding this discussion would add valuable global context.
Combustion efficiency discussion: The discussion on combustion efficiency values seems underdeveloped. Is 0.94 considered high or low? Is it normal or anomalous? More CO₂ or CO affects the atmospheric carbon budget in different ways, and it would be useful to discuss air pollution and atmospheric chemistry versus greenhouse gas effects, as well as comparisons with other biomes in Brazil or other savannas globally.
Methodology: I believe it is essential to list all 69 articles reviewed. This could be done as a table or supplementary material, with details such as publication year, method, and category. It is unclear whether the 69 articles are all in the reference list or if those cited throughout the text are part of this selection.
Scientific question: The question posed—"How compiling published material on fire emissions in natural areas of the Cerrado can provide a better understanding of the placement of these emissions in the atmospheric carbon budget?"—is not adequately addressed or answered throughout the text. My impression is that the answer is "no," due to the lack of studies with a holistic approach. If that is indeed the case, a more in-depth discussion of this point is needed.
Minor review: On line 511, the term "estimate emissions" should likely be "estimate fire emissions."

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2348-RC2
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Renata Veiga, 19 Nov 2024
  
  The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2024/egusphere-2024-2348/egusphere-2024-2348-AC2-supplement.pdf
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2348-AC2

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on egusphere-2024-2348', Anonymous Referee #1, 18 Sep 2024
General comments
The main goal of this manuscript is to perform a systematic and comprehensive literature review on fire emissions in the Brazilian Cerrado, and put these emissions into perspective of the global carbon budget. Given that Brazil is the largest contributor to land use (LU) emissions, the role of fire in LU emissions, and Cerrado as the largest contributor to Brazil's annual burned area, this assessment is relevant and of interest to the scientific community. To my knowledge, there is no such assessment yet, and this study could potentially contribute significantly to understanding the current state of fire emission estimates in the biome and identify research gaps. Unfortunately, I don't think the authors were successful in doing so. I will detail my main concerns with this manuscript below:
The research question. The question that the authors use to guide their review process is the following: "How compiling published material on fire emission in natural areas of the Cerrado can provide a better understanding of the placement of these emissions in the atmospheric carbon budget?". This question is not mentioned again in the manuscript and it is left unanswered in the Discussion. Additionally, its formulation is not in line with the main goals of the manuscript. For instance, the question refers to "natural areas of the Cerrado". If this were to mean areas of intact native vegetation, the authors would need to provide a keyword for this, as the vast majority of papers that are mentioned do not focus on natural areas, and are often estimates for the entire biome or specific land cover types. I also believe that "global carbon budget" would be more appropriate than "atmospheric carbon budget".

At no point in the manuscript, are the 69 papers disclosed. This is a major concern, as the papers found through the PRISMA method are never listed. The authors refer to many papers throughout the text, but the reader does not know if these papers are those included in the literature review, or just part of a discussion. There is no list, even in Supplementary Material, of the papers, along with their respective topic (fire dynamics parameters, emission estimates, and fire management and policy) and study design (empirical, review, and perspective). Moreover, these classifications are explained in the Results section (e.g. lines 210-214) rather than in Methods. The authors also divide the papers according to study area (Global, Tropical region, South America, Brazil, Cerrado) which is never mentioned in Methods.

Given that the paper is about fire emissions, there is a lot of discussion about fire patterns and drivers. There are many papers, especially in the "fire dynamics parameters" category, that do not evaluate emissions. Although burned area and fire intensity are parameters used to estimate emissions, discussing fire patterns and their climatic and human drivers should not be a main focus of this literature review. The authors also select burned area as the sole parameter to estimate fire emissions in Figure 5 (Section 3.1), to then explain how Fire Radiative Power (FRP) can also be used in the last paragraph of Section 3.2. This shows a lack of grasp of some of these concepts: for instance, the authors introduce FRP in Section 3.2 as if it was not the same parameter as "fire intensity" in Section 3.1; they also mention that "FRP considers (...) area affected by fire" and that it uses "MODIS active fires are inputs" which is, at best, vey badly worded.

The manuscript needs to be substantially re-organized. The Introduction fails to provide background to the importance of fire emissions in the Cerrado, both in the national and global context. The role of fire emissions in the global carbon cycle/budget should also be highlighted, along with the role of Brazil in the LULC emissions as the highest emitter (see the Global Carbon Budget 2023). Information on how carbon emissions are estimated worldwide should be included (e.g. what data and methods are usually employed), so that the reader can better understand results found in the literature review. Moreover, as a tropical savanna, the Introduction could also leverage on information from other tropical savannas worldwide. As mentioned previously, the Methods section is missing key information (e.g. that the analysis only considers papers up to 2022, or how the trend line in Figure 2 is estimated and its significance level), and in the Results section is hard to distinguish between description of papers found through the review process and discussion (e.g. lines 163-165, 272-278, 279-282, 330-333, 375-379, 396-398, 402-405, 441-460). Lastly, the Discussion should include limitations on current methods and estimates, especially those found in the review process.

Most importantly, the authors fail to deliver on their main goal as it is not clear the importance of Cerrado's emissions to the global carbon budget. The authors also fail to conclude what is obvious for the reader: that there is barely any literature on fire emissions in the Cerrado, especially if comparing with other biomes worldwide. They also do not discuss the mitigation potential for Brazil in LU emissions, and the impact and importance of such policy changes in keeping to the 1.5ºC goal (see Roe et al., 2019 in Nature Climate Change).

Specific comments
Line 441: I believe the authors are confusing emission factors with carbon emissions.

Line 327: "low fuel moisture and low flammable biomass" if there is low fuel moisture, there should be high flammability. Please clarify.

Line 380: "GFED relies on the study done by (...) to quantify emissions worldwide" GFED doesn't rely on Van Der Werf et al. (2017). Its fourth version is described in that paper. Moreover, "small burned areas detection derived from MODIS" seems to entail that GFED did not rely on MODIS, which is incorrect. Please clarify how small burned areas were included in the GFED dataset (which also relies on active fire information).

Line 558-559: how are fire emissions a sink of CO2?

Technical corrections
Standardize units throughout the manuscript (e.g. Pg year-1 or Pg per year)

Please write biome in lowercase.

Line 502: "we found" should be "Van Der Werf et al. (2017) found"

Authors' contribution is missing an author.

Either "burnt area" or "burned area". Both are used in the manuscript.

Figure 3 has 25 papers in the Cerrado, while the text mentions 26 (line 182).

Figure 3 and 4 could be merged into one.

Figure captions need to be much more detailed.

Line 489: dos Santos et al. (2021) found that fire management reduced LDS in 3 PAs of the Cerrado, not in "areas of the Cerrado", this should be clear.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2348-RC1
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Renata Veiga, 19 Nov 2024
  
  The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2024/egusphere-2024-2348/egusphere-2024-2348-AC1-supplement.pdf
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2348-AC1
RC2:
'Comment on egusphere-2024-2348', Anonymous Referee #2, 08 Oct 2024

The authors provide a comprehensive review of the literature on emissions from fires in the Brazilian Cerrado biome. The article effectively discusses fire dynamics parameters, emission estimates, and fire management and policy, which are critical not only for the scientific community but also for various sectors involved in fire mitigation, adaptation strategies, and control efforts. Given Cerrado’s strategic importance within South America and its role in the global carbon budget, the article addresses relevant issues with broad implications. While the article is innovative and presents a novel assessment of the Brazilian Cerrado, I believe that some aspects of the scientific question were explored in a rather superficial manner.
Below are specific points I would like to raise:
Introduction and Brazilian Cerrado biome characterization: The introduction provides a useful overview of the geographical, seasonal, vegetative, and emission characteristics of the Cerrado. However, it overlooks two crucial aspects: (1) The Cerrado’s role in water resource availability in Brazil, as it is responsible for surface water in 8 of the 12 major Brazilian hydrographic regions, and how climate change and extreme fire events could impact the hydrological cycle. (2) The socio-biodiversity of the Cerrado, shaped by its peoples’ socio-cultural relationships with nature, is highly relevant when considering the connection between ancestral knowledge and integrated fire management. I believe these points would enhance the introduction.
Fire-climate feedback loop: In the introduction, you discuss how fire and climate regulate one another and can form a positive feedback loop. However, there is no mention of the interaction between droughts and heat waves, which amplifies fire risks. Recent research highlights the importance of understanding compound drought, heatwaves, and fires, which I consider essential to this work's context.
Distribution of studies: You classify the studies by location range, from global to local scales, indicating that the number of studies is higher for the Cerrado and global levels. I was curious about the spatial distribution of the institutions involved in these studies. Are they predominantly Brazilian or located in the Cerrado region? In other words, who is driving research on fire impacts in the Cerrado?
The decline in publications in 2022: The sharp drop in publications in 2022 is striking. Could this reflect a shift in focus toward another biome, such as the Pantanal? A simple analysis of publication trends in other biomes could provide insight. Also, might the pandemic have affected research outputs? While I understand this is not the article’s focus, the significant drop warrants more than a brief mention.
Critical fire year in 2020: Your findings show that 2020 was the most critical year in terms of burned area. Is there any information on what caused this increase? Could it be related to drought and exacerbated heat, or perhaps changes in government policy or legislation? This point deserves further discussion in the text.
Fire management focus: You identify that only 8% of papers focused on fire management, and state that "this review captured no studies quantifying the amount of fire emissions mitigated by fire management in the Cerrado." This seems to contradict the statement that "three prominent topics identified were fire dynamics, emission estimates, and fire management". I believe adjusting the scientific question or the criteria for topic selection is necessary. Additionally, while there may be no studies on integrated fire management reducing emissions in Brazil, may research outside Brazil, such as in Australia have shown this potential? Expanding this discussion would add valuable global context.
Combustion efficiency discussion: The discussion on combustion efficiency values seems underdeveloped. Is 0.94 considered high or low? Is it normal or anomalous? More CO₂ or CO affects the atmospheric carbon budget in different ways, and it would be useful to discuss air pollution and atmospheric chemistry versus greenhouse gas effects, as well as comparisons with other biomes in Brazil or other savannas globally.
Methodology: I believe it is essential to list all 69 articles reviewed. This could be done as a table or supplementary material, with details such as publication year, method, and category. It is unclear whether the 69 articles are all in the reference list or if those cited throughout the text are part of this selection.
Scientific question: The question posed—"How compiling published material on fire emissions in natural areas of the Cerrado can provide a better understanding of the placement of these emissions in the atmospheric carbon budget?"—is not adequately addressed or answered throughout the text. My impression is that the answer is "no," due to the lack of studies with a holistic approach. If that is indeed the case, a more in-depth discussion of this point is needed.
Minor review: On line 511, the term "estimate emissions" should likely be "estimate fire emissions."

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2348-RC2
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Renata Veiga, 19 Nov 2024
  
  The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2024/egusphere-2024-2348/egusphere-2024-2348-AC2-supplement.pdf
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2348-AC2

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (22 Nov 2024) by Renata Libonati

AR by Renata Veiga on behalf of the Authors (26 Nov 2024) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (29 Nov 2024) by Renata Libonati

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (09 Jan 2025)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Although I believe a review paper for fire emissions in the Cerrado is definitely due and would be of interested to the scientific community, unfortunately this is not it. The manuscript is badly structured and written, lacks scientific rigor, and shows a concerning lack of understanding of many concepts. It is my opinion that the research question is poorly chosen and that the manuscript does not clarify the reader on the role of Cerrado's fire emissions in the global carbon budget. I will list below some of my main concerns with this review paper.

1) Lack of focus
This literature review proposes to clarify the role of Cerrado's fire emissions in the global carbon budget through existing literature. To do so, the authors spend a large portion of the manuscript discussing papers that do not evaluate fire emissions but rather several aspects of fire behaviour and regime. Although knowledge on fire dynamics contribute to improved emission estimates, none of the papers listed do so. The authors also put a lot of focus on fire management, while it is clear that there isn't enough research on fire emissions in the Cerrado to properly characterize the fire-driven carbon fluxes in the biome. I would advise the authors to focus on fire emissions and on attempting to answer the research question (which does not pertain to fire dynamics).

2) Natural areas
The authors did not clarify why they focus on "natural areas". I don't see the reason for making the distinction between natural and anthropogenic land covers in regards to fire emissions. Fire is use for a variety of purposes in the Cerrado, such as agriculture and pasture management. These occur in anthropic areas and also contribute to fire emissions. Given that around 50% of the Cerrado biome is anthropogenic land cover (Colman et al., 2024) and a considerable portion of burned areas occur in these lands (Silva et al., 2021), I would argue that, by excluding fires in anthropogenic land covers, this review will inevitably yield erroneous results as to the role of fire emissions of the Cerrado in the global carbon budget. Moreover, even if the authors proceed with this criteria of fire emissions in "natural areas", as I stated in the previous round of revisions, a keyword should be provided as all biome-wide and global studies will consider anthropogenic land use.

3) Aims of the paper
The authors state that they aim to understand how measurements are performed, how to use different non-standardized measurements, and the available products. I would argue that this goal was not met, as it is not explained anywhere how measurements of emission factors and carbon emissions are obtained, much less a discussion on which methods/measurements are best and limitations. The authors do not list available products and/or explore in the Discussion other methods that were not found in the Cerrado literature.

4) Manuscript structure and English
It is still unclear to the reader, in the Results section, if the papers mentioned are included in the review or not. For instance, which paper gave information on how burned area and fire intensity contribute to emission estimates in lines 319-328? Only three papers are mentioned in the beginning of this paragraph: one of them is not in the literature review and the two others do not discuss or evaluate fire emissions. If none of the papers discuss this, then this information should not be in the Results section. There are several more instances where papers that were not found in the literature review (and thus not listed in the Supplementary Material) are cited in the Results section: for example, Haas et al. (2022) - line 357; Bistinas et al. (2014) - line 368; Ichoku et al. (2018) - line 418; several in lines 484-485; Bustamante et al. (2018) - line 558. Conversely, there are many papers found in the literature review that are not mentioned in the text and their contributions to the subject remain undiscussed.
Several sections of the Results belong in Discussion as they are not stating what was found but rather an interpretation of the authors (e.g. lines 220-226, 274-277, 344-354, 501-504, 552-559, 594-607). Likewise, information that would be relevant in Methods is still stated in the Results section (e.g. lines 227-229, 239-243).
Lastly, it would help a lot to know which papers are being analysed and belong to each subsection of Results.

5) Lack of knowledge of the papers cited and concepts discussed
The authors wrongly cite several papers, which is not acceptable in a literature review. There's several examples in the "Other comments" section.

6) Statistical analysis
The authors could easily employ simple statistical methods that would add significance to their results. Indeed, in the previous version of the manuscript there was a trend line in Figure 2 that, albeit lacking information on how it was computed and its parameters, added statistical significance to the clear upward trend in papers over the last 2 decades. However, the authors removed this analysis but still state in the text that: "There is an increasing tendency in the number of papers (...)" (lines 218-219).

Other comments:
- Please use en dashes for ranges (e.g. lines 381, 411, 519, 591, 592)
- Line 50: this is incorrect. Neither Gomes et al. (2020b) nor Hofmann et al. (2021) show that fires are increasing in the Cerrado. Recent papers suggest otherwise (e.g. Andela et al., 2017).
- Line 222: please see Pereira et al. (2024) "Changes, trends, and gaps in research dynamics after the megafires in the Pantanal". They do refer to a shift in the academic community's attention pre and post the 2020 megafires.
- Lines 329-330: the prevalence of studies in fire dynamics do not show a "gap in linking fire dynamics directly to emissions" as they do not propose to do so.
- Line 336: Libonati et al. (2015) do not consider plant complexity. They do discuss that regional products better reflect different vegetation types.
- Line 338: Silva et al. (2021) do not propose to divide Cerrado into 19 ecoregions based on fire parameters. They do use the ecoregional framework and evaluate fire.
- Lines 340-343: this is incorrect. Looking into INPE's Queimadas website (https://terrabrasilis.dpi.inpe.br/queimadas/aq1km/) the value for 2020 is 138,540 km2 and 74,085 km2 for 2009, different from the values presented by the authors. 2020 was also not a critical term in terms of wildfire in Brazil, as easily confirmed in INPE's Queimadas website, either using active fires or burned area. It was, however, a critical year for Pantanal.
- Lines 344-345: Pivello et al. (2021) do not show that 2020 was a significant year in terms of burned area in the Cerrado. They do say that it was an extreme year for Amazon and Pantanal.
- Lines 345-347: this is incorrect. Neither Libonati et al. (2022) nor Hofmann et al. (2021) show that 2020 was a drought year in the Cerrado, as none of the studies even consider 2020 in their historical time series. And dos Santos et al. (2024) does not discuss Cerrado.
- Lines 347-349: I'm fairly certain that the authors are confusing Cerrado with the Pantanal.
- Lines 366-367: reference?
- Lines 382-383: these acronyms were already defined in the Introduction (e.g. line 47 for LDS).
- Lines 409-410: reference?
- Lines 412-414: reference?
- Lines 417-419: this is incorrect, as I mentioned in the previous round of revisions.
- Figure 5: very confusing figure. It doesn't help in understanding how each of these parameters contribute to the end goal of estimating fire emissions. At best, this figure should be discussed in section 3.3.
- Line 511: this is incorrect. Gomes et al. (2020a) does not use the BEFIRE model. And these are not estimations of carbon emissions from fires in Cerrado. These parameters only show that the amount of carbon released depends on land cover type. The study does not quantify emissions.
- Lines 548-551: reference?
- Line 570: "That makes sense" is not adequate scientific writing.
- Line 583: "Despite the relevance of fire management to fire emission", reference?
- Lines 610-611: it would be interesting to see how many papers actually evaluate emissions and their trends throughout the study period.
- Figure 6: this should be results, as it is characterizations of the papers found in the review process.
- Line 653: remove the "Therefore".
- Lines 658-659: again, how are fire dynamics a sink of CO2?
- Table 3: please clarify what is "Fire culture" and how it relates to burned area.
- Lines 680-684: repetition. Same information in lines 498-504.
- Line 710: replace on-site with in-situ.
- Line 711: "incorporating non-carbon aspects of fire in fire emissions", please clarify.

Hide

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (13 Jan 2025)

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (03 Feb 2025) by Renata Libonati

AR by Renata Veiga on behalf of the Authors (31 Mar 2025) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (27 Apr 2025) by Renata Libonati

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (06 Jun 2025)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (06 Jun 2025)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I’d like to thank the authors for the attention, time and effort put into answering all my questions and remarks. The manuscript has substantially improved from previous versions and it's clear it has been extensively revised. I still have a couple of comments and suggestions that would improve readability, but nothing major.

Abstract ----------------------------------------------------------------

I think the Abstract would benefit with more detail and the key take-away messages. For instance, it is not clear that, amongst the papers that evaluated fire emissions, most were on a global or continental scale and there were only 2 papers that explicitly analysed fire emissions in the Cerrado. This severe lack of literature on the issue (especially compared to other ecosystems, as the authors reinforce), is one of the key take-aways of the paper in my opinion. Could also mention that most of these studies were conducted by international teams and a considerable number did not include Brazilian authors nor institutions based in the Cerrado biome.

Minor comments:
Line 12: I suggest changing “countries” to “ecosystems”.
Line 12: I think it’s missing a phrase stating what this study is proposing to do (e.g. “Here, we propose to bridge this gap by (…)”), to precede results on the following sentence “Of 77 systematically reviewed papers (…)”.
Line 12: “papers” is duplicated.
Line 12: Is the 54% correct? Lines 290-291 state 46 papers for “fire dynamics” and 12 for “management and policy” (that is, 58 total for both categories). If some of these are double counted, then this number should figure somewhere in the manuscript for clarification.
Line 13: I suggest “While these are key to provide a holistic (…)”.
Line 16: “Methodological techniques” seems redundant (also on the legend of Figure 5). I suggest “Most papers employ different methods (…)”.
Line 18: I suggest rephrasing to “More research is required to understand fire dynamics and emissions in the Cerrado and identify potential mitigation measures (…)”.
Line 19-21: While I agree that land surface models would benefit from including fire management, I’d say it’s more urgent that the scientific community works to properly quantify emission factors for Cerrado’s vegetation types and across fire types (more/less intense fires, EDS/LDS fires, etc).

Introduction ----------------------------------------------------------------

I think the Introduction is quite big and could be slightly summarized and re-organized. I propose to relocate the following paragraphs: paragraphs from lines 55 to 77 could follow the first paragraph (lines 23-30), characterizing the Cerrado biome and fire activity. Then, keep paragraphs from lines 31-54, discussing fire emissions in Cerrado. And finally, paragraphs from lines 78-104.

Minor comments:
Line 24: I suggest “Around 49% of Cerrado (965,783 km2) is covered (…)”.
Line 37: “However” seems misplaced. There is no contradiction.
Line 38: This phrase is confusing as is. I suggest something along the lines of “Thus, understanding the contribution of each of these greenhouse gases, especially CO2, in fire emissions is essential, especially in fire-prone ecosystems such as Cerrado.”.
Line 40: I suggest rephrasing this sentence, deleting “immediate emissions” and “fire participates”. Something along the lines of “Beyond emissions, fire interacts with several components of the carbon cycle, shaping complex interactions and carbon balance over time.”.
Lines 42-44: Needs a reference.
Line 70: Define IPCC.
Line 78: As it’s the first time this term is used in the article, and because it has not been said yet that this is one of the categories identified in the study, it is not clear what “fire dynamic parameters” is. I propose changing to “understanding fire dynamics provides grounding (…)”.
Lines 80-82: Is this not a result?
Line 80: I suggest changing “cycle” to “budget”.
Line 84: GHG is not defined.
Lines 87-88: Reference?
Lines 89-91: I believe this belongs in Discussion.
Line 94: I suggest “what are the parameters used (…)”.
Line 95: You mean “pyrogenic carbon”? If so, this term should be employed earlier in the text.
Line 101: I suggest “describe fire parameters”.

Methods ----------------------------------------------------------------

I think this section presents my only remaining disagreement with the authors: the use of “natural areas”. I disagree with the authors that “A focus on natural areas allows for a clearer evaluation of how fire interacts with ecosystem function, rather than being confounded by human-driven fire use.”, as fires in natural areas of the Cerrado are still, in their vast majority, human-driven (e.g. see Arruda et al. 2024: “Natural vegetation was the most affected, primarily due to human-driven ignition during the dry season”).

Nevertheless, I completely agree with the point the authors make in “Knowledge Gaps in Fire Regimes and Emissions” and add that it should be included in the Discussion. However, I don’t think it justifies the use of “natural areas” in the study.

I don’t think that including anthropogenic burning would change the scope of the article, as the study already considers anthropogenic burning. As mentioned before, ignitions in the Cerrado are overwhelmingly human and, as such, any discussion of fire and fire emissions in the biome will consider anthropogenic-driven fires, unless it specifically evaluates lightning-induced fires or “natural fire regimes”. Additionally, most papers found in the review process include burning in anthropogenic land covers and discuss the human components of fire. As there is no keyword in the review process for this, this is not explicitly accounted for throughout the manuscript. Moreover, there is no other mention of “natural areas” in Results or Discussion (except for the repetition of the research question). As such, I don’t see the need to make this distinction, when this is not reflected in the Methods, Results and Discussion.

Minor comments:
Lines 139-140: I wouldn’t say “there is greater certainty”, it’s the yearly availability of these products that start in 2003.
Lines 192-197: This information should come earlier in the Methods section, maybe after line 142.
Lines 192-197: Please clarify the different between Review and Perspective papers for the reader.
Line 203: I suggest just using “fire dynamics” instead of “fire dynamics parameters”.
Line 203: I think the authors meant “research”.

Results ----------------------------------------------------------------

Minor comments:
Line 229: How was the trend estimated (linear regression, Mann-Kendall, etc)? This information should be added to Methods.
Line 237: There is no contradiction, as Mistry et al. (2019) also extrapolates from a smaller region to a larger.
Figure 4: Please upload with higher resolution.
Line 291: I suggest rephrasing to “(…) policy. It’s worth noting that 24 papers are related to more than one topic.”.
Lines 298-299: This sentence belongs in the Discussion.
Line 301: Please clarify what “modelling” means in this context. Statistical modelling, process-based models?
Line 313-314: I think this sentence belongs in the Discussion and Conclusion.
Line 325: “emissions”
Line 379: Use the acronym previously defined for modified combustion efficiency.
Line 382: Use the acronym previously defined for late dry season fires.
Line 384: The values are so similar it is relevant to show the uncertainty range if there is one.
Lines 385-386: It is said that the values are underestimated, and the following sentence says these are high. Seems contradictory.
Line 389: I suggest “(…) estimating emissions (…)”.
Line 428: This seems to entail that the previous studies did not use FRP as a measure of fire intensity, which is not the case.
Lines 433-435: If FRE is not used in any study I don’t see why its definition is needed here.
Lines 448-452: I think this belongs to the Discussion.
Figure 6: I now agree with the authors that the figure is essential to report findings. However, I still have reservations about the arrows, namely those going to Burned Area and Combustion completeness and then Fire emissions. You found in the literature that there are other parameters (e.g. FRP; emission factors) used to estimate Fire emissions. Why are they not considered here?
Legend of Figure 6: I don’t think it’s “fire spreads from forests to grasslands” but rather “fire spread increases from forests to grasslands”.
Line 498: Is the 43% correct? Isn’t it 43 papers out of 77?
Line 520: Acronym already defined previously.
Lines 526-530: Seems Discussion to me.
Table 2: I think it would be interesting a discussion on the similarity/disparity of the values found in the literature, and how they compare to broader estimates (from savannas in South America, for example).
Table 2: Please clarify that Gomes et al. (2020a) does not estimate emissions.
Line 579: Please remove “and even in the units”. Gomes et al. (2020a) does not estimate emissions but rather the amount of carbon released in combustion, which is a parameter that can and will be used to estimate emissions.
Lines 579-584 and 592-594: Seems Discussion to me.
Line 602: Define IFM.
Line 619: “small-scale”
Line 620: This section of the sentence is confusing: “fire regime characteristics of fire management activities”. Maybe “(…) studies that estimate activities associated with fire management activities, such as prescribed burning (…)”.
Lines 627-629: The results of Santos et al. (2021) are valid for which region? Better to mention.
Lines 630-636: Please highlight that this is a result. That is, that this is what the papers cited discuss and inform.

Discussion ----------------------------------------------------------------

Lines 640-642: The authors mention a “broad and holistic understanding of the role of these emissions in the carbon budget on regional, national and global scales” however, up to this section of the manuscript, there has been no such discussion. As per my comment for Table 2, I suggest writing a paragraph on this.
Line 658: I wouldn’t say 31% of papers is “most”.
Lines 673-674: Slightly misleading sentence. Two papers were identified that estimate emissions in Cerrado. Even if only one goes back to 1985.
Line 693: First time that pyrogenic carbon is mentioned in the text. If the authors want to use this term, I suggest using it earlier in the manuscript.
Line 714: Use the acronym previously defined.
Line 724: I would also add to the discussing the findings of Andela et al. (2017; A human-driven decline in global burned area), where they found that a recent decrease in savanna fires worldwide is driven by human occupation.
Table 3: Shouldn’t FRP be added to the column on the left?

Conclusion ----------------------------------------------------------------

I would suggest reinforcing the take-away messages in the Conclusion as well (similarly to the Abstract).

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (11 Jun 2025) by Renata Libonati

AR by Renata Veiga on behalf of the Authors (21 Jun 2025) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (01 Jul 2025) by Renata Libonati

AR by Renata Veiga on behalf of the Authors (08 Jul 2025) Manuscript

Journal article(s) based on this preprint

23 Sep 2025

Review article: Fire emissions in the Brazilian Cerrado – dynamics, estimates, management, and their role in the global carbon budget

Renata Moura da Veiga, Celso von Randow, Chantelle Burton, Douglas I. Kelley, Manoel Cardoso, and Fabiano Morelli

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 25, 3581–3601, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-3581-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-3581-2025, 2025

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Renata Moura da Veiga, Celso von Randow, Chantelle Burton, Douglas Kelley, Manoel Cardoso, and Fabiano Morelli

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We systematically reviewed 69 papers on fire emissions from the Brazilian Cerrado biome to provide insights into its placement in the atmospheric carbon budget and support future improved estimation. We find that estimating fire emissions in the Cerrado requires a comprehensive approach, combining quantitative and qualitative aspects of fire. A pathway towards this is the inclusion of fire management representation in land surface models and the integration of observational and modelling data.


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