Insights into Post-Fire Dynamics: Evaluating Short-Term Vegetation Recovery During Mega Drought in Central Chilean Mediterranean Forests

Native forest landscapes globally face unprecedented challenges due to land use changes and climate changes, impacting terrestrial biodiversity conservation. Despite efforts to control forest loss, fragmentation, and degradation, uncertainty persists regarding the effects of climate change on forest dynamics, including shifts in productivity, species composition, and disturbance patterns. This study focuses on the Mediterranean ecosystems in Central Chile, known for their resilience to stressors like drought and wildfires. However, changing disturbance regimes in recent decades have tested their adaptive mechanisms. Understanding the effects of new disturbance regimes and their interactions on forest recovery is crucial, particularly in poorly studied ecosystems like the Mediterranean region in South America. Using remote sensing-based vegetation indices, we analyzed short-term (5-year) vegetation recovery after wildfires in Central Chile during the Mega Drought period (2010-2022) and compared it with two preceding decades (1992-2009). Normalized Difference Vegetation Indices (NDVI) were employed, and environmental variables, including climate, topography, and burn severity, were considered to model post-fire recovery from Random Forest models. Drought duration emerged as the most influential factor negatively affecting post-fire vegetation recovery, particularly in hillside areas. Fire severity showed a complex relationship with recovery, positively correlated in humid years but negatively in dried years. Our findings emphasize the critical role of drought in shaping post-fire vegetation recovery in Mediterranean forests. With the ongoing Mega Drought in Central Chile, understanding these dynamics becomes paramount for adaptive management. The study underscores the importance of comprehensive remote sensing monitoring to assess ecological processes, model ecosystem vulnerability, and study climate and disturbance regime interactions. These insights are essential for developing effective strategies to protect and manage forest ecosystems in the face of changing environmental conditions.