Plantio de restauração, sob domínio de Mata Atlântica, em uma área afetada por fogo.

Abstract

Forest fires, particularly when frequent and intense, lead to the combustion of organic matter, the release of carbon stocks, and an imbalance in soil properties, thereby impacting the ecosystem's functionality. As in other biomes, the Atlantic Forest, too, sees the rise in global average temperature resulting from climate change act as a catalyst for new fires, feeding back into the process. Given this increasingly frequent scenario, this chapter aimed to assess the impacts of a 2024 fire on the parameters of phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, pH, organic matter, total organic carbon, cation exchange capacity, and soil density. The assessment was carried out in a Legal Reserve area located in the city of Salto de Pirapora, in the state of São Paulo, and soil samples were collected between eight and twelve months after the fire. The area was divided into three sample plots, considering the impact of the fire: a completely burnt area, a partially affected area, and an undamaged area that was not burnt and used as a control. The results showed that three of the nine parameters assessed showed statistically significant increases between the completely burnt area and the control area: potassium, phosphorus, and pH. The absence of variations in the other physico-chemical parameters suggests that the fire was superficial and indicates high resilience of the soil assessed. In this regard, despite the immediate impacts typically observed after burning organic matter, the soil demonstrated a high capacity for recovery even without specific management. This result reinforces the importance of continuous monitoring for assessing local ecological resilience and for better defining strategies for environmental recovery in areas impacted by fires.