Tropentag, September 16 - 18, 2026, Göttingen "Towards multi-functional agro-ecosystems promoting climate-resilient futures"

Understanding the wildfire risk landscape: Implications for forest ecosystem conservation in Tolima, Colombia

¹University of Göttingen, Competence Centre of Landscape Resilience, Germany
²Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, Z-GIS Dept. of Geoinformatics, Austria
³University of Göttingen, Dept. of Silviculture and Forest Ecology of the Temperate Zone, Germany

Abstract

Altered wildfire regimes caused by anthropogenic disturbances and global warming are a growing concern in tropical ecosystems. Indeed, critical ecosystems such as the Andean moorlands and different forest types were severely impacted by fires that burned over 73,000 hectares in 2017, with 95% of these events in Colombia caused by human activities. Despite efforts by public and private Colombian institutions to assess the impact of forest fires over the years, a reliable protocol for evaluating these disturbances remains to be established. To address this, we aimed to evaluate the effects of forest fires through multi-temporal analysis and climate variability over seven years in the Tolima Department, Colombia. We integrated MODIS and VIIRS thermal sensor data with CHIRPS climate datasets and CORTOLIMA (the regional environmental authority) vegetation cartography. We applied the national IDEAM protocol alongside Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) with Natural Breaks (Jenks) to transform discrete hotspot points into continuous spatial density maps, enabling the identification of critical risk clusters. Our findings reveal that in 2017, rainfall was insufficient to counter the fires, whereas in 2022, record-high precipitation drastically reduced active hotspots. However, our mapping from 2016-2023 shows that fires consistently occurred in the same critical ecosystems each year. Ultimately, our research contributes to regional contingency planning mechanisms, providing a strategic framework for adapting to climate change and mitigating wildfire impacts in Tolima, Colombia.

Keywords: Forest fire

Contact Address: Jeimy Katherin Feo Mahecha, University of Göttingen, Competence Centre on Landscape Resilience (CLaRe), Büsgenweg 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany, e-mail: jeimy.feomahechauni-goettingen.de