I propose several broad fire regimes and provide an analysis of fire ecology for the principal vegetation types in Mexico. Forty percent of Mexican ecosystems are firedependent (pine forests, several oak forests, grasslands, several shrublands, savannas, palm lands, wet prairies, ‘‘popal’’ and ‘‘tular’’ swamps), 50% are fire-sensitive (tropical rain forests and tropical seasonal forests, tropical cloud forests, mangrove, fir forests, several oak forests, and several shrublands), and the remaining 10% fall into fire-influenced (such as several gallery forests) and fire-independent categories (shrublands in most xeric environments, very high-altitude prairies). I also present an analysis of current fire-management trends, highlighting the trend toward integral fire management, which merges prevention and control, community-based fire management, and ecological fire management. |