Response to Comment on “The Incidence of Fire in Amazonian Forests with Implications for REDD”

Abstract

Balch et al . suggest that the increased fire frequency reported in our study is principally due to post-deforestation activities. We present a new analysis demonstrating that for the majority of grid cells with positive fire trends, there is a low likelihood that these trends have resulted exclusively from post-deforestation activities. We therefore confirm that fires pose a growing threat to reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) policies.