In the last two decades, unprecedented changes have taken place in the
frequency and severity of wildfires; in different regions of the world, some
fires were even classified as megafires. Although there are studies about the
diverse effects of fire, which have made significant theoretical contributions,
a comprehensive review of the changes in fire research is required to
understand worldwide patterns, particularly in those countries where fire
activity is on the rise, such is the case of Mexico. The objective of this
study was to analyze the trends in the research on wildfires published in
Mexico and worldwide over a 40-year timescale. For this purpose, the Web of
Science database, bibliometric tools, and the keywords TI=
Forest fire* OR TI= Wildfire* were used to extract as many articles as possible related to
fires from 1980 to 2020, without being restricted to those studies whose title
included any of the variants of the keywords. There were 8458 publications
about fires in the vegetation cover, with a notable increase in the frequency
of studies in the previous decade; 52% of the studies were concentrated in five
countries and 20% of the articles focused on the study of different aspects of
the soil. Mexico ranks thirteenth in volume of scientific production and
studies in the country have focused mainly on the description of the
quantitative relationship between the size of the affected area and the number
of occurrences in the landscape, meanwhile, studies on fires and the
consequences on the biotic interactions have been little explored.
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