(Wild)fire is not an ecosystem service

Abstract

In their paper entitled "Wildfires as an ecosystem service", Pausas and Keeley (2019) summarize the benefits generated by – as well as the evolutionary and socioecological importance of – wildfires for humankind. Although we recognize the importance of wildfires in such a context, we argue that presenting wildfire per se as an ecosystem service is conceptually incorrect and can be misleading for policy makers and resource managers. Throughout their paper, the authors repeatedly refer to (wild)fire as a potential provider of multiple ecosystem services (and not as an ecosystem service itself, as indicated in their article's title). We believe that this is more than a dispute over semantics, for such a contradiction could lead to misperceptions about the definition of the term " ecosystem services", which is especially concerning in light of its real-world applications to fire management. ; ÂS received support from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through PhD grant SFRH/BD/ 132838/2017, funded by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, and by the European Social Fund–Operational Program Human Capital within the 2014–2020 EU Strategic Framework. AR is funded by Xunta de Galicia (post-doctoral fellowship ED481B2016/084-0). This research was developed as part of the project FirESmart (PCIF/MOG/0083/2017), which received funding from the FCT. The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion