From flames to recovery: ecosystem resilience in Uttarakhand’s 2022 forest fires

Abstract

The foothills of the Himalaya are one of the major hotspots of forest fires in India. Forest fires during the hot-dry summer season (March-June) often cause damage to the Forest ecosystem, one of such events is the Uttarakhand fires in 2022, which seriously impacted the natural vegetation led to economic losses. However, its drivers and ecosystem resilience to vegetation impacts are not well understood. Using hydroclimatic, vegetation, and fire datasets, we thoroughly examined the spatio-temporal variations and recovery of burnt vegetation. High-severity burns were concentrated in the southern regions of Uttarakhand, interpreted based on the dNBR index classes. The burned biomass calculated for the selected high severity area, showed decline (16.75%), post-fire recovery (40.85%) indicated uneven ecosystem resilience. High VPD and low soil moisture, intensified the fire risks but during monsoon onset and fire-induced rainfall helped restore soil moisture and reduce VPD, supported early vegetation recovery. The satellite observation indices observed dynamic restoration immediate after the fire event, showed SAVI (from ~0.23 – 0.43) and VCI (from ~40-80), indicating secondary succession. Overall post-fire burned regions had SH>40% and LH