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Fire, Native Peoples, and the Natural Landscape
... This represents a gradient between "humanized" and "pristine" landscapes; a somewhat subjective use of adjectives that highlights an essential question that must be asked for the purposes of landscape protection and management (Vale 2002). ...
... "For any particular area of America (and anywhere else, for that matter), did (and do) the fundamental characteristics of vegetation, wildlife, landform, soil, hydrology, and climate result from natural, nonhuman processes, and would these characteristics exist whether or not humans were (and are) present? (Vale 2002) These native management practices and TEK signify a wealth of knowledge and an unparalleled resource in understanding the history of a site and its past ecological conditions. ...
... A thorough evaluation of this reciprocal relationship reveals several ambiguities with how we perceive landscapes. There is a confusion that real world landscapes exist somewhere between human world and natural world, when in reality there is a gradient of overlap between the two; most landscapes considered "pristine" are defined by the conditions created through human engagement with the natural system (Vale 2002 (Fermilab 1971). Recognizing natural processes, such as the indigenous use of fire in maintaining ecosystems, has increased to a more mainstream awareness. ...
A history of intensive, clear-cut logging adjacent to the historic boundary of Redwood National & State Parks (RNSP) in California’s North Coast has created a post-industrial landscape within much of the present-day park. Overstocked with an unnatural composition of timber species, severely degraded habitat, and crisscrossed with a network of abandoned logging roads sets the scene for the site of the Lower Prairie Creek (LPC) Restoration Project. Remediation along this network of logging roads, in conjunction with forest thinning efforts, has begun a long-term effort to set this landscape on a trajectory towards a future stablestate condition. However, within the project site, there is currently limited opportunity for engagement through trails, and even less opportunity to understand how the story of this place, including its restoration, has shape the land. Research Objective: How can road-to-trail conversion and a proposed trail network in the Lower Prairie Creek Restoration Project Area at RNSP establish a precedent for documenting previous anthropogenic changes to an ecosystem while raising awareness and/or recording the benefits of ongoing restoration? A review of both design and redwood ecology literature, coupled with field observations, mapping and trail network development has led to an iterative design process for exploring how trail and restoration design can advance conservation in sensitive landscapes.
... More generally, lower population numbers, perhaps combined with careful management of the landscape, could have meant that Indigenous Americans left a small footprint with only regional or local impact (e.g. Vale 2002;Munoz et al. 2014). Continental-scale palaeoecological research has emphasized the importance of climate variability on vegetation composition (e.g. ...
... Burden et al. 1986;Delcourt et al. 1986;McAndrews and Boyko-Diakonow 1989;Clark and Royall 1995;Fuller et al. 1998;Parshall and Foster 2002;McLauchlan 2003;Delcourt and Delcourt 2004;Faison et al. 2006;. Studies of the vegetation of mountainous western North America concluded that human impact, including the setting of fires, was more local than regional (reviewed in Boyd 1999;Vale 2002;Lepofsky and Lertzman 2008), as did a study of the eastern deciduous forest (Munoz et al. 2014). Especially in the west, there is difficulty in separating climate-induced vegetation change from human impacts, given the topographic and ecosystem complexity in the mountain region, such that the spatial extent of the human impact is not clear (e.g. ...
... Our conclusion is that there is presently little indication of continental-scale impacts of human activities on the vegetation of North America over the course of the Holocene, but rather that it was local and regional. Vale (2002) provided a classification of land use by Indigenous Americans useful for this discussion, and more work at regional scales, as discussed in the Introduction, could document this interaction. b. ...
Between the initial colonization of North America and the European settlement period, Indigenous American land use practices shaped North American landscapes and ecosystems, but a critical question is the extent of these impacts on the land, and how these influenced the distributions of the flora and fauna. The present study addresses this question by estimating the spatial correlation between continental-scale records of fossil pollen and archaeological radiocarbon data, and provides a detailed analysis of the spatiotemporal relationship between palaeo-populations and ten important North American pollen taxa. Maps of Indigenous American population density, based on the Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database, are compared to maps of plant abundance as estimated by pollen records from the Neotoma Paleoecology Database, using nonparametric kernel estimators and cross-correlation techniques. Periods of high spatial cross-correlation (either positive or negative) between population density and plant abundance were identified, but these associations were intermittent and did not increase towards the present. In many cases, high values of population density corresponded with high values of a particular taxon in one region, but simultaneously corresponded with low values in other regions, lessening the overall correlation between the two fields. This analysis suggests that human impacts were not significant enough to be identified at a continental scale, either due to low population numbers or land use, implying significant impacts of ancient human activities on the vegetation were regional rather than continental.
... Anthropogenic burning was likely a significant factor in ecological changes associated with the arrival of Homo sapiens to new environments in the Late Quaternary (McWethy et al., 2010;Bowman et al., 2011). Despite this close connection between people and fire, the ecological significance of landscape burning by Indigenous people in North America has often been controversial (Vale, 2002;Roos et al., 2014). In many cases, this has hinged on the ambiguity of distinguishing an anthropogenic signal in paleofire records that are already rich with fire (Roos et al., 2019). ...
... The seeming redundance of Indigenous burning with existing lightning fire regimes has sometimes been used to dismiss Native American burning as ecologically unimportant (Vale, 2002). As demonstrated here, ancient landscapes that were subject to Native American fire management produced different fire regimes than lightning-only regimes but were also culturally variable. ...
The impact of Indigenous populations on historical fire regimes has been controversial and beset by mismatches in the geographic scale of paleofire reconstructions and the scale of land-use behaviors. It is often assumed that anthropogenic burning is linearly related to population density and not different cultural practices. Here we take an off-site geoarchaeology strategy to reconstruct variability in historical fire regimes (<1000 years ago) at geographic scales that match the archaeological, ethnohistorical, and oral tradition evidence for variability in the intensity of Indigenous land use by two different cultural groups (Ancestral Pueblo and Western Apache). We use multiple, independent proxies from three localities in ponderosa pine ( Pinus ponderosa ) forests in east-Central Arizona to reconstruct fire regime variability during four phases of cultural use of different intensities. Elevated charcoal with domesticate pollen ( Zea spp.) but otherwise unchanged forest pollen assemblages characterized intensive land use by Ancestral Pueblo people during an early phase, suggesting fire use to support agricultural activities. By contrast, a phase of intensive pre-reservation Western Apache land use corresponded to little change in charcoal, but had elevated ash-derived phosphorus and elevated grass and ruderal pollen suggestive of enhanced burning in fine fuels to promote economically important wild plants.
... However, the historical role and significance of fire-use in the transformation and maintenance of landscapes remains unresolved. Debate exists across a wide variety of socioecological contexts ranging from hominin-savannah interactions to the cultural landscapes of late Holocene agriculturalists (Simmons and Innes 1987;Krech 1999;Vale 2002;Daniau et al. 2010). A number of highly cited review papers have called for improved understanding of the role of humans in influencing the variability of fire regimes and landscape patterns through time and space (Pausas et al. 2009;Bowman et al. 2011). ...
... In the absence of clearly operationalized theory, biophysical scientists interpreted such arguments as simply building uncritically on Stewart's (2002) ''culture determines biogeography'' hypothesis. As a consequence much of this work was dismissed based on lack of attention to issues of scale and overreliance on biased and ecologically vague historical accounts (Russell 1983;Vale 2002). ...
Fire-use and the scale and character of its effects on landscapes remain hotly debated in the paleo- and historical-fire literature. Since the second half of the nineteenth century, anthropology and geography have played important roles in providing theoretical propositions and testable hypotheses for advancing understandings of the ecological role of human-fire-use in landscape histories. This article reviews some of the most salient and persistent theoretical propositions and hypotheses concerning the role of humans in historical fire ecology. The review discusses this history in light of current research agendas, such as those offered by pyrogeography. The review suggests that a more theoretically cognizant historical fire ecology should strive to operationalize transdisciplinary theory capable of addressing the role of human variability in the evolutionary history of landscapes. To facilitate this process, researchers should focus attention on integrating more current human ecology theory into transdisciplinary research agendas.
... The importance of Native Americans in modifying pre-Euro-American fire regimes has also been emphasized in the Southwest U.S. -Mexico borderlands region (Pyne, 1982;Swetnam et al., 2001) and elsewhere in the West (e.g., Vale, 2002;Fry and Stephens, 2006;Biondi et al., 2011). Ample debate continues on the relative importance of changes in climate relative to human activities, such as the elimination of Native American burning followed by Euro-American fire exclusion, as drivers of changing fire regimes in modern times (Anderson, 2006;Allen, 2002;Vale, 2002). ...
... The importance of Native Americans in modifying pre-Euro-American fire regimes has also been emphasized in the Southwest U.S. -Mexico borderlands region (Pyne, 1982;Swetnam et al., 2001) and elsewhere in the West (e.g., Vale, 2002;Fry and Stephens, 2006;Biondi et al., 2011). Ample debate continues on the relative importance of changes in climate relative to human activities, such as the elimination of Native American burning followed by Euro-American fire exclusion, as drivers of changing fire regimes in modern times (Anderson, 2006;Allen, 2002;Vale, 2002). ...
a b s t r a c t Characterizing climate controls on fire regimes, and disentangling the effects of human relative to climate influences, has been difficult in forests of the western U.S. due to the nearly ubiquitous legacy of fire exclusion that began in the middle to late 19th century. However, the Sierra San Luis of northern Mexico, just across the border from Arizona and New Mexico, offers an opportunity to examine the influence of climate and land-use on fire history largely without the effects of modern fire exclusion. Pine forests in portions of the Sierra San Luis remain ungrazed and unlogged to this day, while other portions of the Sierra were not logged until ca. 1952–1954 or grazed until the early 1930s. Historical and modern fire regimes closely reflect these differences in land-use through time. Fires were relatively frequent in all sites until 1932, but continued at high frequency only in the sites without grazing or logging. Notably, the influence of drought and antecedent conditions for fires changed over time. From 1650 to 1886 (early period), fires occurred during drought years, with little influence of climate in antecedent years. However, from 1887 to 2003 (modern period), drought in the year of fire became generally unimportant and fires instead occurred following wet years. Above-average precipitation promotes accumulation of fine fuels, which apparently has been the primary constraint on fire ignition and spread in this semi-arid ecosystem during the modern period. Percentage of scarring aligned with multi-year fluctuations in Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), with higher percent scarring in wet periods (X = 19.371) and lower scarring in dry periods (X = 13.778). Native American burning was not an important driver of past fire frequency, even though the study area lies within the historical homeland of the Chiricahua Apache people. We found no change in frequency of fires when Apaches were effectively removed in 1886. Climatic controls, rather than Apache wartime and peacetime periods, more easily explain changes in frequency over time. Pro-jected increases in climate variability in the Southwest highlight the need to understand antecedent cli-mate conditions conducive to fire occurrence in fuel-limited systems, including comparisons of historical to current climate–fire relationships. The relict forests of the Sierra San Luis, where fires continue to burn today with only minimal human interference, provide a rare look at these relationships. Ó 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
... The importance of Native Americans in modifying pre-Euro-American fire regimes has also been emphasized in the Southwest U.S. -Mexico borderlands region (Pyne, 1982;Swetnam et al., 2001) and elsewhere in the West (e.g., Vale, 2002;Fry and Stephens, 2006;Biondi et al., 2011). Ample debate continues on the relative importance of changes in climate relative to human activities, such as the elimination of Native American burning followed by Euro-American fire exclusion, as drivers of changing fire regimes in modern times (Anderson, 2006;Allen, 2002;Vale, 2002). ...
... The importance of Native Americans in modifying pre-Euro-American fire regimes has also been emphasized in the Southwest U.S. -Mexico borderlands region (Pyne, 1982;Swetnam et al., 2001) and elsewhere in the West (e.g., Vale, 2002;Fry and Stephens, 2006;Biondi et al., 2011). Ample debate continues on the relative importance of changes in climate relative to human activities, such as the elimination of Native American burning followed by Euro-American fire exclusion, as drivers of changing fire regimes in modern times (Anderson, 2006;Allen, 2002;Vale, 2002). ...
... Scholars have continued to renew this debate over several decades, most recently by paleoecologists and archaeologists claiming that Indigenous groups minimally impacted fire regimes over millennia in southern New England (Oswald et al. 2020), a claim that other researchers (Abrams and Nowacki 2020;Roos 2020) and Indigenous persons (Leonard et al. 2020) dispute. This exchange was only the most recent iteration of the debate (Denevan 1992(Denevan , 2011Vale 2002;Mann 2006), one extending back throughout the 20th century (e.g. see summaries in Patterson III and Sassaman 1988;Whitney 1996). ...
Background
The extent of past Indigenous cultural burning in the eastern US remains contested. Historical documents (e.g. early histories, journals, and reports) contain descriptions of burning. Scholars have summarised descriptions, but few have compiled them into databases.
Aims
This paper presents efforts to compile descriptions of past Indigenous burning in the eastern US and early results from mapped descriptions.
Methods
Utilising previously cited descriptions and those discovered from digitised historical texts, the current dataset mapped >250 descriptions of burning in the northeastern US. Most were historical summaries from 19th century authors, and fewer were firsthand observations. Descriptions are currently shared as a GIS data layer, a tabular file, and an interactive web map.
Key results
Descriptions correspond with fire-adapted vegetation, and clusters of descriptions suggest burning over large extents (e.g. southern New England, western New York). Estimated dates of burning or initial Euro-American settlement show an east–west succession in Indigenous fire exclusion and replacement with early Euro-American burning.
Conclusions
Historical descriptions suggest regional-extent influence of Indigenous burning upon past forested ecosystems, but the veracity of descriptions should be carefully evaluated.
Implications
This study provides a dataset for further examination of Indigenous burning and comparison with other methodologies for historical cultural fire reconstruction.
... However, cultural landscape preservation has been one of the US National Park Service missions for decades (Page, 2009) and indigenous peoples have embraced restoration challenges (Higgs, 2003;Martinez, 2003). Indeed, in North America as in most places in the world, native peoples have shaped the landscapes (e.g., Keeley, 2002;Vale, 2002). This mismatch frames a recent discussion over whether there is a "nature-culture dichotomization" (Evans and Davis, 2018) or a nexus (McDonald et al., 2019) in SER documents referring to cultural ecosystems and landscapes. ...
Conceptual frameworks for landscape restoration commonly take an approach focused on ecological (biotic and abiotic) aspects. Yet the recent initiatives demanding that restoration be scaled up to restore millions of hectares of degraded land often encounter socio-cultural challenges too, such as competing land-use interests and low stakeholder engagement. Thus, consideration also needs to be given to cultural landscapes, broadly defined as regions that reflect the long-term interactions between people and the environment. Based on a literature survey we here identify and then discuss features from cultural landscapes-ecological restoration research, which can be relevant to ecological restoration upscaling. Overall, research encompassing cultural landscapes is revealed as less narrowly-focused than that on landscape ecology linked with ecological restoration: our selected studies quite frequently considered social and landscape aspects in addition to ecological aspects. Geographically, research is strongly biased towards Europe and North America, although the most ambitious restoration targets are in the tropics. Taking cultural landscapes into account could enhance restoration by (1) moving towards a transdisciplinary approach thereby offsetting the overemphasis on ecological aspects, and (2) mitigating issues of land use and stakeholder engagement. Further research, paying special attention to the tropics, should aim at integrative approaches that would contribute to scaling up restoration, not only in single large-scale projects but also through the sum of small but concerted actions.
... Before the arrival of humans, fires occurred late in the dry season or in the beginning of the rainy season, ignited mainly by lightning (Dias, 2006). However, when humans began to use fire for domestic activities about ~100 000 years ago (Goldammer, 1993;Vale, 2002), they modified fire regimes, reshaping the climate-fire relationship (Bliege Bird et al., 2012). Human activities can cause landscape fragmentation, increasing fire ignitions or suppressing fire occurrence, which can also alter fire seasonality and modify the fire dynamic (Archibald, 2016;Bowman et al., 2009). ...
The Cerrado is the most diverse tropical savanna in the world. As a fire-prone ecosystem, natural fire in the Cerrado shapes plant communities and drives evolutionary processes. Human activities and landscape management can alter natural fire regimes and reshape Cerrado dynamics, making biodiversity conservation a challenge, particularly in densely populated areas. We reconstructed the historical fire regime of three protected areas (PA) and their buffer zones in São Paulo state to understand how current fire exclusion policies are affecting fire regimes and to measure how human-climate-fire relationships can change in areas under different land management. We used Landsat satellite imagery, from 1984 to 2017, with 30 m of spatial resolution and 16 days of temporal resolution. In total, we mapped 49,471 ha of burned area, and we detected variations in fire frequency and fire size among sites. PA dominated by open savanna in Itirapina concentrated 93 % of all observed fires, while PA dominated by forest-like formations in Assis represented only 2% of the fires. Annual rainfall showed a very weak relationship (R² = 0.04) with annual total burned area, while the rainfall split between dry and wet seasons showed a tendency to have a fuel moisture effect which determined the vegetation available to burn in the dry season (R² = 0.09). Fire regimes in PA were similar to those observed in buffer zones suggesting that fire-exclusion policies do not effectively prevent fires in PA that are surrounded by an anthropic matrix where fire is often used. When we included human factors in addition to rainfall, our models explained 44 % of variation of burned areas. We conclude that fire regimes in São Paulo Cerrado have been modified by humans and that fire exclusion is not a suitable policy for protected areas in this fire-prone ecosystem.
... A more subtle yet no less important role of humans in fire regimes is the potential augmentation of fire frequencies and alteration of forest communities through the intentional use of fire by Indigenous peoples, a contention that was first popularized within Western perspectives of North America by Stewart (1951) and later endorsed and expanded by others (Day 1953;Sauer 1956;Denevan 1992;Stewart 2002;Cronon 2003;Mann 2005). The notion of a nearly ubiquitous and substantial influence by Native Americans on vegetation communities of North America has been challenged by a number of authors who suggest a more spatially limited role for people in influencing vegetation communities (Kaye and Swetnam 1999;Vale 2002a;Foster 2017;Oswald et al. 2020). The actual impact of Native Americans on fire regimes likely lies somewhere between these extremes, but identifying the specific places and extent of these practices is challenging due to losses of historical knowledge and oral traditions among many Indigenous communities during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Vale 2002b). ...
The creation and modification of landscape patterns through interactions among people and the environment is a defining focus in the discipline of geography. Here, we contribute to that tradition by placing 500 years of red pine (Pinus resinosa) tree-ring data in the context of archaeological, ethnographic, and paleoecological records to describe patterns of Anishinaabeg land use and fire occurrence in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) of northern Minnesota. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that stories of people, fire, and red pine are tightly interwoven in the BWCAW. We suggest that preferential use and maintenance of specific sites with fire by Border Lakes Anishinaabeg before 1900 led to the xerification of forest communities that produced conditions more desirable to people in a rugged near-boreal landscape. Today, after a century of fire absence, these sites represent fading ecological legacies that are still sought by wilderness users for their recreational values and perceived wilderness character. Ironically, protections granted by the 1964 Wilderness Act are resulting in a decline of the red pine forests once used to help justify establishment of the BWCAW. An opportunity exists for wilderness managers, users, and advocacy groups to reassess the need for active management and the strategic return of frequent fire to the aging pine forests of the BWCAW. Engaging descendent communities of the Border Lakes Anishinaabeg in these efforts could help move beyond conventional approaches to wilderness management and restore the reciprocal relationship between people, fire, and red pine in the BWCAW and beyond.
... The influences of humans on historical fire regimes have long been debated (Roos et al. 2014). The idea that forests of the western United States were pristine natural areas wherein fire activity was driven solely by climate contends with a view that nearly all western fire regimes were anthropogenic, in which fires were set to manipulate forests for human benefits (Denevan 1992, Vale 2002a, b, Kay 2007. A more nuanced perspective on historical human-fire interactions among Native American groups is emerging in the western United States (Stan et al. 2014, Spoon et al. 2015, Taylor et al. 2016, Whitehair et al. 2018. ...
Unraveling the effects of climate and land use on historical fire regimes provides important insights into broader human–fire–climate dynamics, which are necessary for ecologically based forest management. We developed a spatial human land‐use model for Navajo Nation forests across which we sampled a network of tree‐ring fire history sites to reflect contrasting historical land‐use intensity: high human use, primarily in the Chuska Mountains, and low human use, primarily on the central Defiance Plateau. We tested for and compared human‐ and climate‐driven changes in the fire regimes by applying change point detection, regression, and superposed epoch analyses. The historical fire regimes and fire–climate relationships reflect those of similar forests regionally and are similar between the two Navajo landscapes until the early 1800s. We then determined that a previously identified, localized, early (1830s) decline in fire activity was geographically widespread across higher human‐use sites. In contrast, fires continued to burn uninterrupted through this period at the lower use sites. Though the 1830s included significantly wet and cold periods that could have contributed to fire regime decline, human factors pose a more spatiotemporally consistent explanation. A rise in Navajo pastoralism in the 1820s–1830s was concentrated seasonally in the heavy use sites. By the 1880s, livestock numbers more than doubled, grazing became far more spatially widespread, and frequent fire regimes of Navajo forests collapsed. The last widespread fire recorded on either landscape was in 1886. In the Chuska Mountains, livestock and fire coexisted for over 50 yr between the initial 1832 fire decline and the end of frequent fires after 1886, an exceptional pattern in the western United States. Though unique in its timing, character, and spatial dynamics, the collapse of historical fire regimes in Navajo forests contributed to now over a century without frequent surface fire, leaving Navajo forests at risk for large, uncharacteristic high‐severity fires.
... While indiscriminant burning was reduced, land managers continued to use prescribed fire and other treatments to reduce sagebrush cover and density in an effort to increase grass production for livestock and wildlife from the 1930s through the 1970s, and to a lesser extent thereafter [41]. Vale [369] reported that by 1974, about 10% to 12% of 99 million acres (40 million ha) of big sagebrush rangeland in North America had been managed to reduce big sagebrush cover and increase grass production (see Changes in Herbivory). In some areas, shorter fire rotations in Wyoming big sagebrush-basin big sagebrush cover types since European-American settlement may be due to frequent prescribed burning [7] (see Fire Rotations Estimated Using Contemporary Fire Records). ...
This synthesis summarizes information about fire regimes in mountain big sagebrush communities available in the scientific literature as of 2018. It is available at: https://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/fire_regimes/WY_basin_big_sagebrush/all.html.
... The importance of anthropogenic burning in local and regional environmental histories of has been controversial. The difficulties of identifying anthropogenic influences in empirical fire histories has encouraged a speculative polemic, with some scholars arguing for continental-scale transformation by widespread anthropogenic burning [1,2] and others claiming that human activities were virtually irrelevant prior to the modern era [3][4][5]. The top-down influences of climate on fuel abundance and flammability coupled with the regularity of natural ignitions in many fire-prone continental environments has led some scholars to conclude that anthropogenic ignitions are of minor consequence historically, particularly when compared to the magnitude of change caused by fuel alterations in recent decades, including the effects of fire suppression [4,6,7]. ...
Paleofire studies frequently discount the impact of human activities in past fire regimes. Globally, we know that a common pattern of anthropogenic burning regimes is to burn many small patches at high frequency, thereby generating landscape heterogeneity. Is this type of anthropogenic pyrodiversity necessarily obscured in paleofire records because of fundamental limitations of those records? We evaluate this with a cellular automata model designed to replicate different fire regimes with identical fire rotations but different fire frequencies and patchiness. Our results indicate that high frequency patch burning can be identified in tree-ring records at relatively modest sampling intensities. However, standard methods that filter out fires represented by few trees systematically biases the records against patch burning. In simulated fire regime shifts, fading records, sample size, and the contrast between the shifted fire regimes all interact to make statistical identification of regime shifts challenging without other information. Recent studies indicate that integration of information from history, archaeology, or anthropology and paleofire data generate the most reliable inferences of anthropogenic patch burning and fire regime changes associated with cultural changes.
... Mountain big sagebrush communities were frequently targeted [345]. Vale [299] reported that by 1974, about 10% to 12% of 99 million acres (40 million ha) of big sagebrush rangeland in North America had been managed to reduce big sagebrush cover and increase grass production (see Changes in Herbivory). In some areas, shorter fire rotations in mountain big sagebrush communities since European-American settlement may be due to frequent prescribed burning [11] (see Fire Rotations Estimated Using Contemporary Fire Records). ...
This synthesis summarizes information about fire regimes in mountain big sagebrush communities available in the scientific literature as of 2018. It is available at: https://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/fire_regimes/mountain_big_sagebrush/all.html
... By investigating how habitat types, community composition and species abundances changed as cities developed, we can begin to understand which drivers were most important and which effects are salient. This will provide insight into current debates over the role of fire and Native Americans in shaping North American landscapes (Vale, 2002). According to the "mesophication" hypothesis, frequent fires mostly set by Native Americans maintained open, "park-like" communities composed of fire-tolerant species across most of eastern North America prior to European settlement (Day, 1953;Lafon, Hoss, & Grissino-Mayer, 2005;Nowacki & Abrams, 2008). ...
Questions
This study compares the extent of habitat types, species composition of plant communities and abundance of individual tree species in northeast Ohio between 1800 and 2014. This comparison allows us to test hypotheses about the drivers of community change, including climate change, fire suppression and disturbance frequency, and to evaluate the impact of urbanization on biotic homogenization.
Location
Cuyahoga County, Ohio, USA.
Methods
Ranked timber observations from early land surveys were compared with vegetation plots throughout the Cleveland Metroparks system. We used ordination, cluster analysis and indicator species analysis to compare plant communities in the two time periods. We tested whether differences in species frequency and dominance from 1800 to 2014 depended on climate, fire and shade tolerance and life‐history strategy.
Results
In 1800, 94% of Cuyahoga County was forested, 5% wetlands and <1% open oak woods. Most forests in 1800 were dominated by Fagus grandifolia (47%), Quercus (28%) or Acer (11%). At the community level, the largest changes from 1800 to 2014 were decreases in communities dominated by F. grandifolia and Quercus and an increase in communities dominated by Acer. Fagus grandifolia, Castanea dentata, Tilia americana and Carya decreased in frequency, and Acer, Prunus serotina and Ulmus increased. The best predictor of changes in frequency was life history; species with a ruderal strategy tended to increase. Climate, fire and shade tolerance did not predict changes in frequency. Plant communities in 2014 vegetation plots were more similar to each other than plant communities on the 1800 survey lines.
Conclusions
The urbanization of northeast Ohio led to regionally homogenous vegetation and plant communities in which ruderal species are frequent and dominant.
... Chaparral, like most mediterranean shrublands, is highly fire resilient and historically has experienced high-severity, stand-replacing fires every 30 to 100 years (Keeley and Davis 2007). Historically, Native Americans burned chaparral to promote grasslands for textiles and food (Vale 2002). Though adapted to infrequent fire, chaparral plant communities can be extirpated by more frequent disturbances (Syphard et al. 2007). ...
Fuel hazard reduction treatments such as prescribed fire and mastication are widely used to reduce fuel hazard. These treatments help protect people from wildfire, yet may not be mutually beneficial for people and ecosystems in areas adapted to infrequent crown fire. Short-term studies indicate that some fuel hazard reduction treatments can be detrimental to biodiversity and ecosystem function, suggesting that land managers face an acute dilemma between protecting people or ecosystems. However, the long-term ecological trajectories and fuel hazard outcomes of fuel treatments are poorly understood. Using a 13-year replicated experimental study, we evaluated how shrub cover, non-native species abundance, native species diversity, and an obligate seeder responded to fuel treatments in California’s northern chaparral. The fuel hazard reduction treatments (fire and mastication) and their seasons of implementation (fall, winter, and spring) had unique influences on plant communities. Untreated controls had continuous shrub canopy with no understory throughout the study. Recovery of shrubs after mastication was slower than recovery after fire. Ten years after treatment, shrub cover in fire treatments and spring mastications produced 1% to 2% less cover than the control, whereas fall mastications produced 8l% less cover than the control. The number of non-native plants, including non-native annual grasses, was higher after mastication treatments compared to fire treatments after 10 years. Surprisingly, mastication treatments also increased cover of an uncommon native shrub that is an obligate seeder. The season of treatment also influenced these outcomes, but to a lesser extent than treatment type. Long-term shrub species composition did not follow the trends of short-term species composition of shrub recruitment. Based on these findings, we concluded that fuel hazard reduction treatments only reduce shrub cover for approximately 10 years, and can change plant community composition, suggesting that thorough consideration of the decision to use fuel hazard reduction treatments is warranted.
... Evidence of patterns and consequences of burning have been presented a number of times (e.g., Alperson-Afil and Goren-Inbar 2010; Bliege Bird et al. 2012;Bond and Keeley 2005;Davies, Holdaway, and Fanning 2016;Griffin 2002;Perlès 1977;Sergant, Crombe, and Perdaen 2006;Scott 2000Scott , 2009Vale 2002; see also Alperson-Afil 2017; Barkai et al. 2017;Dibble et al. 2017;Henry 2017;Holdaway, Davies, and Fanning 2017;White et al. 2017). Bellomo's work (1993Bellomo's work ( , 1994 remains one of the most general treatments of methodology, based on a number of experimental studies as well as literature and aimed to give documentation to the main kinds of natural fire as well as to the nature of hearths. ...
Early human fire use is of great scientific interest, but little comparative work has been undertaken across the ecological settings in which natural fire occurs or on the taphonomy of fire and circumstances in which natural and human-controlled fire could be confused. We present here results of experiments carried out with fire fronts from grass- and bushland in South and East Africa. Our work illustrates that in these circumstances hominins would have been able to walk with and exploit fires, and we emphasize that there can be different levels of fire use. The results also indicate that traditional assumptions about the discrimination of these are not reliable. Grass fires pass through the landscape rapidly in burns of less than 5 minutes duration, but areas of denser vegetation burn to much higher temperatures and for much longer. Trees are also caught in fires and may burn back into their roots, baking sediments. Animal bones on the surface can also become burned, so that presence of burned bone has to be used with care as an indicator of human activity. Duration of burning, repeated nature of burning, and copresence of features of human activity may give a better indication of human involvement. © 2017 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved.
... Historical fi re accounts show that lightning-set fi res in many regions of the United States occurred during the growing season, and fi res set by Native Americans occurred in nearly all months, with a majority in the late summer. [6][7][8][9][10] So not only are prescribed burn managers faced with a limited number of burn days per year because of inadequate weather conditions, 11 but they are also limited to burning during one season of the year. In many areas, this time frame is late winter to early spring, which also coincides with highly variable and changing weather conditions. ...
... Historical fi re accounts show that lightning-set fi res in many regions of the United States occurred during the growing season, and fi res set by Native Americans occurred in nearly all months, with a majority in the late summer. [6][7][8][9][10] So not only are prescribed burn managers faced with a limited number of burn days per year because of inadequate weather conditions, 11 but they are also limited to burning during one season of the year. In many areas, this time frame is late winter to early spring, which also coincides with highly variable and changing weather conditions. ...
... Some researchers have argued traditional aboriginal fire use was ubiquitous across the North American landscape (e.g., Day 1953, Denevan 1992, Kay 2007. Others have concluded that highly localized, traditional fire use had little ecological significance across large portions of the continent (e.g., Russell 1983, Vale 2002. The availability of ethnographic research and historical data on traditional fire use varies dramatically from region to region, making the assessment of human use of fire challenging and sitespecific. ...
We reconstructed fire occurrence near a fur-trade era canoe travel corridor (used ca. 1780-1802) in the Quetico-Superior region west of Lake Superior to explore the possibility of human influence on pre-fire suppression rates of fire occurrence. Our research objectives were to (1) examine the spatial and temporal patterns of fire in the study area, (2) test fires' strength of association with regional drought, and (3) assess whether reconstructed fire frequencies could be explained by observed rates of lightning fire ignition over the modern period of record. We developed a 420-year fire history for the eastern portion of Lac La Croix in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW). Seventy-one fire-scarred samples were collected from remnant Pinus resinosa Ait. (red pine) stumps and logs from thirteen distinct island and three mainland forest stands. Collectively these samples contained records of 255 individual fire scars representing 79 fire events from 1636 to 1933 (study area mean fire intervals [MFI] = 3.8 yr). Reconstructed fires were spatially and temporally asynchronous and not strongly associated with regional drought (P > 0.05). When compared to the conservative, tree-ring reconstructed estimate of historical fire occurrence and modern lightning-caused fires (1929-2012), a noticeable change in the distribution and frequency of fires within the study area was evident with only two lightning-ignited island fires since 1934 in the study area. Our results suggest a high likelihood that indigenous land use contributed to surface fire ignitions within our study area and highlights the importance of examining the potential effects of past indigenous land use when determining modern approaches to fire and wilderness management in fire-adapted ecosystems.
... 11 As a consequence, though Native Americans may have regularly camped, traveled, and hunted on the Yellowstone Plateau, it is doubtful that they significantly altered the fire regime due to the inherent resistance to fire found in these forests. 12 Similarly, in the days before the advent of the horse, hunting large game animals was difficult. Except for special circumstances like bison jumps (driving animals over cliffs) as they crossed the Great Plains, spearing caribou as they swam Arctic rivers, catching salmon as they darted over falls on rivers, and other methods, mass killing of large game and fish was impossible. ...
THE IDEA OF SETTING ASIDE LANDS from most commercial development and settlement started almost as an afterthought in 1872 when the United States did something extraordinary. In an age of unbridled westward expansion in the post-Civil War, and at a time when Manifest Destiny was a widely held expression of American conviction in the morality and value of expansionism, the United States Congress withdrew the Upper Yellowstone River region from commercial and private development establishing Yellowstone National Park. Nothing like that had ever been done anywhere before on such a grand scale.
... Muir was not a politician himself but one of the first voices that demanded that the preservation of wilderness and the setting aside of national parks and wildlife sanctuaries is the responsibility of the government. Vale (2002) in his seminal book Fire, Native People and the Natural Landscapes seeks a way to circumnavigate the simplicity of the duality of pristine and humanized landscapes. Vale's work is motivated by the abrupt change in how North America is described before the first European settlers arrived. ...
... Consequently, the nature and scale of ecological outcomes wrought by 'fire-stick farming' (Jones 1969), or the manipulation of resources via fire, remains debated. By some accounts, anthropogenic fire has manufactured landscape diversity (Pyne 1997;Boyd 1999;Gammage 2011), whereas others suggest limited human influence relative to natural ignitions (Vale 2002). ...
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 habitat heterogeneity. Finally, we examine the global extent of intentional burning and diversity of objectives using the scientific literature. The current distribution of Callitris across multiple field sites suggested long-unburnt patches are common and occur at fine scales (<0.5 ha), while modeling revealed smaller, patchy disturbances maximize patch age diversity, creating a favorable habitat matrix for Callitris. The literature search provided evidence for intentional landscape burning across multiple ecosystems on six continents, with the number of identified objectives ranging from two to thirteen per study. The fieldwork and modeling results imply that the occurrence of long-unburnt habitat in fire-prone ecosystems may be an emergent property of patch scaling under fire regimes dominated by smaller fires. These findings provide a model for understanding how anthropogenic burning alters spatial and temporal aspects of habitat heterogeneity, which, as the literature survey strongly suggests, warrant consideration across a diversity of geographies and cultures. Our results clarify how traditional fire management shapes fire-prone ecosystems, which despite diverse objectives, has allowed human societies to cope with fire as a recurrent disturbance.
... ), comenzó a ser utilizado por Homo erectus hace unos 800,000 años (nuestra especie, Homo sapiens apareció hace unos 250,000 años), y aumentó la incidencia de incendios en regiones como el África subsahariana (Bird y Cali 1998). En Norteamérica está ampliamente documentado el uso del fuego por los pueblos indígenas con distintos propósitos tales como cazar animales (desde grandes mamíferos hasta insectos) que huyen del fuego, quemar áreas para favorecer el brote de plantas forrajeras utilizadas por los animales de caza o favorecer brotes de otras plantas (como encinos, por ejemplo) que proveen semillas o frutos comestibles para los humanos, reducir la acumulación de combustibles alrededor de campamentos, etc. (ver Pyne 1996 y los trabajos incluidos enVale 2002). Aunque existen muchos prejuicios sobre los impactos negativos de los incendios en los ambientes forestales, el fuego ha sido desde hace mucho tiempo una herramienta indispensable en el manejo forestal(Pyne 1996, Rietbergen 2001. ...
“El Estado de los Bosques de México” es un esfuerzo por parte del Consejo Civil Mexicano para la Silvicultura Sustentable” A.C. para integrar en un texto, información actual sobre el sector forestal en nuestro país, y principalmente sobre el sector social donde se desarrolla la silvicultura comunitaria. Se aporta información actualizada sobre la situación de los ecosistemas forestales de nuestro país, superficie, condición de la vegetación, producción forestal y datos de deforestación; las formas de aprovechamiento y manejo de los recursos forestales; el análisis de las políticas forestales; la situación de competitividad del sector forestal y el papel que juegan los ejidos y comunidades forestales e indígenas.
... 3) La variación natural o histórica de los regímenes de incendios ha sido en muchos casos alterada o modificada por los seres humanos (Fulé y Covington 1996, Rowell y Moore 1999, Agee 2002, Arno y Fiedler 2005, Hardesty et al. 2005, y debido a esto el impacto de los incendios debe ser considerado actualmente en el contexto de las transformaciones del paisaje y la alteración del clima que caracterizan al cambio ambiental global (Nepstad et al. 1999, Flannigan et al. 2000, Westerling et al. 2006, Manson et al. 2009). 4) El fuego ha sido una herramienta de manejo utilizada prácticamente desde el origen de la humanidad (Pyne 1996, Vale 2002) y existen razones científicas, empíricas y técnicas para su utilización en el manejo de ecosistemas forestales (Chandler et al. 1983, Agee 2002. ...
... Because ecosystems with native peoples differ markedly from those lacking an aboriginal influence, a hands-off approach by today's managers will not duplicate the conditions under which presettlement ecosystems developed (Botkin 1995, Boyd 1999, Christensen et al. 1996, MacCleery 1992, Stevens 1990, Vale 2002. Conversely, it is important to recognize that the technologies used by Native Americans to manage landscapes for thousands of years were far different than those employed by Euro-Americans (Aplet andKeeton 1999, Cronon 1996). ...
... The combination of a warm dry temperature-moisture regime and a disturbance regime featuring surface fire created the distinctive composition and structure shown here. Some studies concluded that this ecosystem condition is the result of a sustainable cultural practice because traditional human uses (Native American burning and associated plant species utilization) were important for sustaining the biodiversity and productivity of these ecological settings (Boyd 1999, Vale 2002. ...
... Fire is a natural disturbance which can occur in all terrestrial ecosystems (Sousa, 1984). Paleoecological evidences show that fire was present in many parts of Europe even before the human colonization of this continent (Feurdean et al., 2012 preparing arable fields for farming and also for increasing the productivity of farmlands (Vale, 2002;Anonymous, 2010;Papanastasis, et al. 1990). Societies adapting burning as management tool were well aware about the negative effects of uncontrolled fire on the capacity of ecosystems to provide goods and services. ...
Fire as a natural disturbance has been present in most European grasslands. Controlled burning
was also an important component of the traditional landscape management for millennia. It was mainly
used to reduce litter and woody vegetation and to maintain open landscapes suitable for farming. Due to
socio-economical changes traditional and sustainable use of fire was ceased and replaced by arsons and
technical fires in Europe. Despite its wide application in the past and the considerable extension and
frequency of current grassland fires, the impact of fire on the grassland biodiversity is still scarcely
documented in Europe. The aim of this study is to offer a perspective on the issue of fire impact on
grasslands, by overviewing published information and practical experiences from Hungary. Our results
suggest that fire can be detrimental for several taxa (e.g. insects or ground-dwelling birds), but can also
promote population growth of several endangered species by reducing litter or by creating and
maintaining open habitats. We also found that fire may be effective in controlling invasive plant species.
The effect of fire on grassland biodiversity may be rather context-dependent. There is a critical need for
developing robust evidences on the context-dependence of fire effect on biodiversity. For this, well
designed prescribed burning experiments are crucial.
... Similarly, Anderson and Smith (1997) could not rule out burning by aboriginals as the cause of the change in fire regimes beginning 4,500 years ago. It is reasonable to assume that the contribution of ignitions by Native Americans was significant but varied over the spectrum of inhabited landscapes (Vale 2002). ...
This chapter addresses the immediately south of the Cascades in the Sierra Nevada bioregion, extending nearly half the length of the state of California. This bioregion is one of the most striking features of the state of California, extending from the southern Cascade Mountains in the north to the Tehachapi Mountains and Mojave Desert 700 km to the south. Moreover, the fire responses of important species and fire regime-plant community interactions in the foothill shrubland and the woodland zone, the lower-montane forest ecological zone, the upper-montane forest, the subalpine forest, the alpine meadow, and the shrubland zone and eastside forest and woodland are explained. The success of the management of the Sierra Nevada is contingent on the ability and willingness to keep fire an integral part of these ecosystems.
Dominant causal explanations of the wildfire threat in California include anthropogenic climate change, fire suppression, industrial logging, and the expansion of residential settlements, which are all products of settler colonial property regimes and structures of resource extraction. Settler colonialism is grounded in Indigenous erasure and dispossession through militarism and incarceration, which are prominent tools in California's fire industrial complex. To challenge settler colonial frameworks within fire management, Indigenous peoples are organizing to expand Indigenous cultural controlled burning, fire stewardship, and sovereignty. These initiatives emphasize reciprocal human-fire relations and uphold Indigenous knowledge systems and livelihoods. Concurrently, Indigenous fire sovereignty is threatened by knowledge appropriation and superficial collaborations. In this article, we review contemporary research on Indigenous burning in order to highlight the strategies that Indigenous communities and scholars employ to subvert colonial power relations within wildfire management and actualize regenerative Indigenous futures.
North America’s diverse grassland, savanna, steppe and desert ecosystems evolved in the absence of domesticated livestock. The arrival of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and horses after 1492 transformed many ecosystems while enabling European soldiers, missionaries and settlers to conquer the continent. The decimation of indigenous populations by warfare, disease and economic dependency further transformed rangelands by removing Native management practices, especially the use of fire. The history of rangelands since then has been one of recursive efforts to commodify and territorialize rangeland resources—including wildlife, grass, soil fertility and the land itself—for market production and exchange. Many former rangelands have been lost altogether, by conversion to forest cover (due to fire suppression) or to agricultural uses (especially in the Great Plains), and invasive exotic plant species have radically altered large areas of rangelands in California, the Great Basin, and other regions. Nonetheless, North American rangelands remain both vast and invaluable for wildlife. The Western Range system of public land grazing leases, which emerged from the devastating overgrazing of the late nineteenth century, succeeded in stabilizing range conditions and linking land use and management across large landscapes of mixed ownerships. With accelerating urbanization, the rise of environmentalism, and structural shifts in the livestock industry since World War II, however, the Western Range has begun to unravel, exposing rangelands to development and fragmentation. Climatic variability in the form of droughts, floods and extreme fire conditions, more so than aridity per se, has frustrated efforts to extract value from rangelands from the outset, and climate change promises to amplify these phenomena going forward.
Practical Guidelines for Wetland Prairie Restoration in the Willamette Valley, Oregon – Field-Tested Methods and Techniques. The science of wetland prairie restoration has made significant strides in recent years, building on lessons learned locally in Oregon and Washington and on applied research and practice from around the country. The content of this guide is based on a variety of sources including the findings of several EPA funded replicated field experiments conducted in the West Eugene Wetlands area between 2006 and 2013, extensive literature reviews, and lessons learned over nearly two decades of on-the-ground experience by the West Eugene Wetlands Mitigation Bank (and Coyote Prairie North Mitigation Bank). The guide focus is on restoration in agricultural lands, in part because a large percentage of the historic wetland prairie lands have been converted to agricultural uses and therefore some of the greatest potential for large scale restoration exists in these areas. However, Chapter 6, which is related to long-term management of wetland prairies for maintaining diversity and limiting invasion by non-native plants, is applicable to the management of all types of wetland prairies including remnant and degraded areas. The guide includes information on the history and ecology of Willamette Valley wetland prairies and all phases of the restoration process. Chapters 4-6 provide in-depth information on site preparation, establishment, and long-term management. Appendices include a comprehensive list of vascular plants found in prairies of the region, description of notable Willamette Valley wetland prairie sites, and recommended seeding rates. https://cascadiaprairieoak.org/documents/wetland-prairie-guide
The disturbance is one of the most common and widespread phenomena shaping natural and man-made environments. Disturbance modifies land mosaic, shapes individual patches, and spreads across a broad range of temporal and spatial scales. Snow cover, flooding, gap disturbance in forest, fires, pathogens, animals, and human activity concur with create and maintain landscape patchiness.
Aim
Researchers have debated impacts of past Native American land use on forests including upon tree species composition in north‐eastern United States (US), with estimates of impacts ranging from local to regional extent. This study examines tree relative abundances to assess whether Native Americans influenced geographic distributions prior to Euro‐American settlement.
Location
North‐eastern United States (approx. 420,000 km ² ).
Taxon
Ash ( Fraxinus spp.), basswood ( Tilia americana ), beech ( Fagus grandifolia ), birch ( Betula spp.), cherry ( Prunus spp.), chestnut ( Castanea dentata ), dogwood ( Cornus spp.), elm ( Ulmus spp.), fir ( Abies balsamea ), hemlock ( Tsuga canadensis ), hickory ( Carya spp.), ironwood ( Carpinus caroliniana and Ostrya virginiana ), maple ( Acer spp.), oak ( Quercus spp.), pine ( Pinus spp.), spruce ( Picea spp.), tamarack ( Larix laricina ) and walnut ( Juglans spp.),
Methods
We used boosted regression trees to model abundance patterns and to assess the importance of distance‐based proxies of Native American land use versus environmental variables. We trained models that included and excluded distance‐based proxies. Abundance estimates from original land survey records (1650–1850 CE) were acquired for taxa at 8 km spatial resolution, and related to Native American settlement locations (1500–1800 CE) and 27 environmental variables.
Results
When evaluated upon test data, regional‐scale models of relative abundance that included distance‐based proxies performed only slightly better than models that excluded them, with mean improvements in RMSE of 0.1 percentage points. Models suggest that Native American land use modestly altered the relative abundance of taxa locally, extending no more than 50 km from settlement. Models also suggest slight increases near settlement of a few percentage points in relative abundance for fire‐tolerant and/or dietary taxa (e.g. oak, hickory and pine), and for early‐successional taxa (e.g. ash).
Main conclusions
Past Native American land use had no detectable effect on forest composition across a regional extent, but increased the abundance of fire‐tolerant, shade‐intolerant and nut‐producing trees locally.
Dispersal and colonization are among the most important ecological processes for species persistence as they allow species to track changing environmental conditions. During the last glacial maximum (LGM), many cold-intolerant Northern Hemisphere plants retreated to southern glacial refugia. During subsequent warming periods, these species expanded their ranges northward. Interestingly, some tree species with limited seed dispersal migrated considerable distances after the LGM ~19,000 years before present (YBP). It has been hypothesized that indigenous peoples may have dispersed valued species, in some cases beyond the southern limits of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. To investigate this question, we employed a molecular genetics approach on a widespread North American understory tree species whose fruit was valued by indigenous peoples. Twenty putative anthropogenic (near pre-Columbian habitations) and 62 wild populations of Asimina triloba (pawpaw), which produces the largest edible fruit of any North American tree, were genetically assayed with nine microsatellite loci. Putative anthropogenic populations were characterized by reduced genetic diversity and greater excess heterozygosity relative to wild populations. Anthropogenic populations in regions that were glaciated during the LGM had profiles consistent with founder effects and reduced gene flow, and shared rare alleles with wild populations hundreds of kilometers away (mean = 723 km). Some of the most compelling evidence for human-mediated dispersal is that putative anthropogenic and wild populations sharing rare alleles were separated by significantly greater distances (mean = 695 km) than wild populations sharing rare alleles (mean = 607 km; p = .014). Collectively, the genetic data suggest that long-distance dispersal played an important role in the distribution of pawpaw and is consistent with the hypothesized role of indigenous peoples.
We discuss a simple methodology to enable a statistical comparison of human population with the vegetation of North America over the past 13,000 years. Nonparametric kernel methods are applied for temporal and spatial smoothing of point data obtained from the Neotoma Paleoecology Database and the Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database, which results in sequences of maps showing the development of population and different plant taxa during the Holocene. The estimation of smooth spatial and spatio‐temporal cross‐correlation functions is proposed in order to detect relationships between population and vegetation in fixed time intervals. Furthermore, the effects of varying environment on demographic changes as well as potential impacts of populations on plant taxa over time are analyzed. Pointwise confidence bands for cross‐correlation functions are computed and a robustness analysis is performed to assess the significance of obtained results. Considering the example of oak, an interpretation of our results for eastern North America shows the value of this methodology.
In many geography courses students learn that humans have altered landscapes for centuries and even millennia, and that landscape change may benefit some organisms and not others (e.g., Thomas 1956; Ellis and others 2013; Pearce 2013; Goudie 2019). In a first‐year seminar for undergraduates titled Nature in the New Millennium that I designed and taught in 2000, we explored mind‐bending ways of thinking about the complex relationships between people and the natural world. Readings for this course included The Control of Nature (McPhee 1989), which recounts attempts to battle floodwaters and lava flows and mudslides to protect human lives and property in the way of these natural processes; The End of Nature (McKibben 1989), which challenged us to ponder whether nature existed anymore as the twentieth century ended; Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (Cronon 1996), an edited volume with chapters that prompted us to discuss whether real nature could be found at The Nature Company in the mall, to consider the tension between earning a livelihood logging in the forests of the Pacific Northwest versus protecting the spotted owl, and to think deeply about the trouble with wilderness; and Nature's Geography: New Lessons for Conservation in Developing Countries (Zimmerer and Young 1998), which analyzed the complex character of environmental change from a biogeographical perspective. Did these books highlighting ways in which humans had interacted with and altered the natural world foreshadow the need for a term such as the Anthropocene to describe a time of widespread human impact so marked that Earth's systems changed fundamentally? Was the modifier “anthropogenic” to describe change caused by humans no longer adequate?
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We test the hypothesis that prehistoric Native American land use influenced the Euro-Amer-ican settlement process in a South Carolina Piedmont landscape. Long term ecological studies demonstrate that land use legacies influence processes and trajectories in complex, coupled social and ecological systems. Native American land use likely altered the ecological and evolutionary feedback and trajectories of many North American landscapes. Yet, considerable debate revolves around the scale and extent of land use legacies of prehistoric Native Americans. At the core of this debate is the question of whether or not European col-onists settled a mostly "wild" landscape or an already "humanized" landscape. We use statistical event analysis to model the effects of prehistoric Native American settlement on the rate of Colonial land grants (1749-1775). Our results reveal how abandoned Native Ameri-can settlements were among the first areas claimed and homesteaded by Euro-Americans. We suggest that prehistoric land use legacies served as key focal nodes in the Colonial era settlement process. As a consequence, localized prehistoric land use legacies likely helped structure the long term, landscape-to regional-level ecological inheritances that resulted from Euro-American settlement.
Wildfires alter fluxes of water, sediment, solutes, and organic matter in ways that can be transient or persistent. Alterations in material flux then impact geomorphic processes and landforms in a manner that can also be transient or persistent and that can involve complex response. This themed issue includes papers that document distinctive geomorphic responses in the upland and channel components of forested landscapes in southern Europe, northern Australia, and the western United States. Among the themes that emerge from the collected papers are (i) the importance of ongoing technological developments, including real-time instrumentation, ground-based and aerial remote sensing, isotopic ratios, and numerical models of landscape processes, for documenting and predicting fire-related geomorphic processes and (ii) the great uncertainties about future landscape change in a global environment of rapidly changing climate and growing human populations that encroach onto remaining wildlands in fire-susceptible regions.
Interior Douglas-fir is a prevalent forest type throughout the central Rocky Mountains. Past management actions, specifically fire suppression, have led to an expansion of this forest type. Although Douglas-fir forests cover a broad geographic range, few studies have described the interactive effects of various disturbance agents on forest health conditions. In this paper, we review pertinent literature describing the roles, linkages, and mechanisms by which disturbances, including insect outbreaks, pathogens, fire, and other abiotic factors, affect the development, structure, and distribution of interior montane forests primarily comprised of Douglas-fir. We also discuss how these effects may influence important resource values such as water, biodiversity, wildlife habitat, timber, and recreation. Finally, we identify gaps where further research may increase our understanding of these disturbance agents, their interacting roles, and how they influence long-term forest health.
Postapocalypse stories about human survival and rebound of nature following mass disaster are a familiar genre. A major real world example is the demise of most Native Americans after 1492. This essay is a review of some of what is known about the subsequent return of forests and the explosion of wildlife numbers in the neotropics and in North America. The belief by many early Europeans in the New World, including influential postcolonial writers, that the bounty they observed had preceded them, was mostly false.
IntroductionPremises of HRVChallenges to Developing HRV AssessmentsConclusion
AcknowledgmentsReferences
Although communal bison hunting has long captured the interest of northern Plains archaeologists, few have explored the actions of the people who created the impressive kill sites located in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Instead, the effectiveness of bison hunters has been attributed to their understanding of the local climate and topography, the grassland ecosystem, and the behavior of their prey. What is overlooked in this ecological explanation of bison hunting is the role of humans as active agents in the management of the landscape, the control of herd movement, and the maintenance of the kill complex. Moreover, the behaviors of the hunters were guided by very different perceptions of the relationships between humans and animals. My objective is to incorporate the actions of human communities in the execution of successful bison hunts with specific reference to the strategies employed by the Blackfoot and their ancestors.
Archaeologists working in the vast coniferous uplands of the American Southwest have commonly assumed that the subsistence economies of the prehistoric peoples who dwelt there focused on corn (Zea mays) agriculture, the erratic yields of which were supplemented with the unintensive collection of wild plants. In this paper, we develop an alternative to this orthodox view, in which we posit that human-controlled burning of understory biomass was a vegetation-community and successional-stage management strategy intended to propagate wild plants in bulk quantities. By comparing the relative frequencies and ubiquities of macrobotanical remains recovered from a variety of storage and consumption contexts with pollen frequencies from production and processing contexts, we show that the systematic encouragement of ruderals in pyrogenic resource patches (“niches”) was a sustainable practice that overcame natural limitations to biomass productivity and corn cultivation in pinyon-juniper (Pinus edulis and Juniperus sp.) woodlands. Importantly, these analyses indicate that low-intensity burning was a key aspect of fire-reliant subsistence economies that generated anthropogenic ecosystems whose composition and productivity were markedly different from today’s.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Karl_Butzer/publication/269112431_Australia.05/links/5481f0630cf2e5f7ceaad408.pdf?origin=publication_detail
The Carl O. Sauer Professor Emeritus of geography at the University of Wisconsin –Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706; [sbden@saber.net].
Native Americans relied on fire to maintain a cultural landscape that sustained their lifeways for thousands of years. Within the past 100 years, however, policies of fire exclusion have disrupted ecological processes, elevating risk of wildfire, insects, and disease, affecting the health and availability of resources on which the tribes depend. On Indian Reservations, tribal forest plans include prescribed fire to restore and maintain the lands. Public land managers are now considering ways to restore the fire-based ecosystem, but tribal knowledge about the use and effects of fire has largely been left out of the discussion. For 2 days in June 2010, 7 tribal elders joined with 20 native and nonnative scientists, resource managers, and academics to explore ways to integrate Native American stewardship practices, traditional knowledge, and philosophies with western science to address contemporary forest health and wildfire challenges. The workshop, convened on the Flathead Indian Reservation of the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes located in western Montana, provided a forum for candid dialogue and knowledge sharing. This article, coauthored by all 27 participants, offers a summary background followed by candid highlights of dialogue along with recommendations for progress based on lessons learned. The central conclusion is that integration and application of traditional knowledge with western science for improved stewardship of natural resources will require enduring commitments to knowledge sharing that extend beyond the usual boundaries of professional training and cultural orientation such that learning can proceed, legacy myths might be corrected, and the forests and the people will benefit.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.