Approximately 541,000 hectares burned in NW Iberia during August 2025, a month which recorded both the largest burned area and the most extreme fire-weather conditions in the region’s documented history (1985–2025; Fig. 1) [1]. Although this area constitutes only about 2% of the EU, it accounted for roughly 50% of the total area burned across the continent from January to August 2025 [1]
All vegetation types were affected, with shrublands experiencing the greatest impact. Fire exhibited a strong positive selection for shrublands and, to a lesser extent, pine woodlands (Fig. 2). This indicates that these vegetation types burned disproportionate to their relative abundance in the landscape, suggesting they are more flammable. In contrast, oak stands and croplands showed a pattern of negative selection. For an analysis of fire severity specifically in pine plantations, see Repeto et al. [2]
Fig. 1. Top: Monthly burned area (x 1000 ha) in NW Iberia in relation to the monthly Fire Weather Index. Colors indicate the seasons: summer (red), autumn (back), spring (green), and winter (blue). Dotted lines are 95% percentiles. The inset image is the NW Iberia region on August 18th, 2025 from Zoom Earth. Bottom: Monthly burned area in NW Iberia from 1985 to 2025. Modified from [1]
Fig. 2. Burn selectivity in August 2025: black dots show the fraction of burned area for each vegetation class. The red triangles indicate the presence of each class in the study area (i.e., what fraction of that vegetation class would have burned if fires were equally affecting all vegetation classes). Black error bars are 95% confidence intervals estimated through a conservative leave-one-fire-out jackknife. From [1]
References [1] Sánchez-Hernández G, Turco M, Repeto-Deudero I, Royé D, Baudena M, Montávez JP, Pietroiusti R, Provenzale A, Santin C, Torres-Vázquez MA, Pausas JG. 2025. Record-breaking 2025 European wildfires concentrated in northwest Iberia. Global Change Biol. 31:e70649 [doi | pdf]
[2] Repeto-Deudero I, Ojeda F, Gómez-González S, Miranda A, Cruz-Alonso V, Pausas JG. 2025. The legacy of pine plantations on fire severity. J. Appl. Ecol. 62:3156–68 [doi | pdf]
My review of Hutto’s book “A Beautifully Burned Forest” is now on BioScience: doi | PDF
Here are some quotes by Hutto that I mentioned in my commentary:
Severely burned forests are “magical places that seem to harbor plant & animal species & visual experiences found under no other forest conditions.”
“The only way a species could be restricted to burned forests is if it evolved in the presence of that forest condition for a very long time and concurrently evolved a behavior that limited its habitat breadth to that specific forest condition.”
“If the black-backed woodpecker story can’t convince you that blackened conifer forests represent perfectly natural and historically important environmental conditions that have always occurred within the bird’s geographic range, then there is nothing in biology that can do so.”
“Except for a small fraction of western forests that include low-elevation, ponderosa pine forest types (mostly in the Southwest), the idea that years of [fire] suppression and timber harvest and grazing have created out-of-whack [atypical high fuel] conditions is simply untrue” (my square brackets, for clarification).
“Some places are in and of themselves too special to be altered by logging operations, an old-growth forest is one, and a severely burned forest is another.”
William J. Bond (University of Cape Town) passed away on 4 December 2025. This is a great loss. He was an extraordinary and enthusiastic ecologist, and a critical thinker who greatly influenced many of us. I learned so much from him, and I still had so much more to learn. We will certainly miss him. To remember him, you could listen to his powerful talk on behalf of grasses! a seminal lesson in savanna ecology. Personally, I also find it nice to hear his voice in that video. Here are a few pictures I have of him (click to enlarge).
November 2006, Otay Mountains (San Diego, southern California). From left to right: Malcom Gill, Dylan Schwilk, Ross Bradstock, Peter Clarke, William Bond, and Juli Pausas. Photo by Jon Keeley.
February 2007, Alicante, Spain. From left to right: Ian Wright, Wilfried Thuiller, Andy Gillison, William Bond, and Juli Pausas. In the back: Bill Shipley.
Juli Pausas and William Bond. Left: April 2018, London, working on the Alternative Biome States paper. Right: 2017, Cádiz, Spain, sitting below a recently debarked cork oak. Photos: J. Belliure, F. Ojeda
Update: Orbituary by RA Butler: William Bond, defender of grasslands [link]
