Local and global pyrogeographic evidence that indigenous fire management creates pyrodiversity.

ABSTRACT: Despite the challenges wildland fire poses to contemporary resource management, many fire-prone ecosystems have adapted over centuries to millennia to intentional landscape burning by people to maintain resources. We combine fieldwork, modeling, and a literature survey to examine the extent and mechanism by which anthropogenic burning alters the spatial grain of habitat mosaics in fire-prone ecosystems. We survey the distribution of Callitris intratropica, a conifer requiring long fire-free intervals for establishment, as an indicator of long-unburned habitat availability under Aboriginal burning in the savannas of Arnhem Land. We then use cellular automata to simulate the effects of burning identical proportions of the landscape under different fire sizes on the emergent patterns of habit

SUBMITTER: Trauernicht C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4485971 | biostudies-literature | 2015 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature