The book Incendios forestales: Una introducción a la ecología del fuego, belongs to the collection What do we know about…?('¿Qué sabemos de…?') of the scientific outreach books of the CSIC and the publisher Catarata. The aim of this collection is to bring the state of the art on key research topics to a wide audience through short and accessible texts written by CSIC scientific staff.

Forest fires do not have a good reputation, as we tend to associate them with natural disasters that lead to destruction and, sometimes, human casualties. However, as this book explains, there is a less negative view if we consider that fires are part of nature and have shaped the diversity of our ecosystems for millions of years. But, although there are fire regimes that are natural and totally sustainable from an ecological point of view, the large amount of housing currently built in our forests makes some of them unsustainable from a socioeconomic point of view, which generates many conflicts in land management. The branch of science that studies the role of fires in organisms and ecosystems (fire ecology) provides the scientific basis for improving land management in environments where fires play a predominant role. Sustainable resource management requires a solid grounding in the processes involved, and this book brings some of that basic knowledge to the general public and especially to students, teachers, managers and researchers interested in ecology, as well as to all nature enthusiasts.

Published in its first edition in 2012, this new edition of 2024 is an updated and expanded version. The new global context requires new approaches to fire management. A paradigm shift based on basic science is required. What burns are plants with a long evolutionary history that must be understood if sustainable management is to be made.

CIDE Communication