Human use of biomass has become a major component of the global biogeochemical cycles of carbon and nitrogen. The use of land for biomass production (e.g. cropland) is among the most important pressures on biodiversity. At the same time, biomass is indispensable for humans as food, animal feed,...

Human-induced vegetation fires destroy a large amount of biomass each year and thus constitute an important fraction of the human interference with the energy flows of terrestrial ecosystems. This paper presents a quantification of the biomass burned in large-scale as well as small-scale...