Global combustion: the connection between fossil fuel and biomass burning emissions (1997–2010)

Abstract

One contribution of 24 to a discussion meeting issue 'The interaction of fire and mankind'. Humans use combustion for heating and cooking, managing lands, and, more recently, for fuelling the industrial economy. As a shift to fossil-fuel-based energy occurs, we expect that anthropogenic biomass burning in open landscapes will decline as it becomes less fundamental to energy acquisition and livelihoods. Using global data on both fossil fuel and biomass burning emissions, we tested this relationship over a 14 year period (1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010). The global average annual carbon emissions from biomass burning during this time were 2.2 Pg C per year (+0.3 s.d.), approximately one-third of fossil fuel emissions over the same period (7.3 Pg C, +0.8 s.d.). There was a significant inverse relationship between average annual fossil fuel and biomass burning emissions. Fossil fuel emissions explained 8% of the variation in biomass burning emissions at a global scale, but this varied substantially by land cover. For example, fossil fuel burning explained 31% of the variation in biomass burning in woody savannas, but was a non-significant predictor for evergreen needleleaf forests. In the land covers most dominated by human use, croplands and urban areas, fossil fuel emissions were more than 30-and 500-fold greater than biomass burning emissions. This relationship suggests that combustion practices may be shifting from open landscape burning to contained combustion for industrial purposes, and highlights the need to take into account how humans appropriate combustion in global modelling of contemporary fire. Industrialized combustion is not only an important driver of atmospheric change, but also an important driver of landscape change through companion declines in human-started fires.This article is part of the themed issue 'The interaction of fire and mankind'.

Living on a flammable planet: interdisciplinary, cross-scalar and varied cultural lessons, prospects and challenges

“…A holistic fire scholarship must develop common agreement in working terms and build across disciplines. An example of such efforts includes the adaptation of Pyne's historical narrative of human fire use [145] into the hypothetical relationships between the 'pyric phases' of Bowman et al [26], some of which are evaluated by Balch et al [7]. Nonetheless, short of a major institutional shakeup of academia, fire researchers will likely have to communicate to two disparate audiences: their colleagues across the fire sciences, but also those in their traditional disciplines.…”

“…These challenges cut across particular geographical, social and temporal scales that require equivalent scientific and policy emphasis. From transnational Earth system impacts [1], to domestic impacts on sovereign nations [2], to impacts on local communities [3] and the individuals who make up communities, the perceptions, decisionmaking and prioritization of policy goals are built upon cultural and historical experiences [4][5][6] that have legacy effects, lags and feedbacks across temporal scales [7][8][9][10][11][12]. Although there is a growing literature on building fire-adapted communities [13,14], it is important to recognize that there is both heterogeneity and variability in the historical, technological, cultural and environmental contexts in which humans perceive and respond to fire challenges [15], and that in turn these have cross-scalar feedbacks through sociopolitical structures [2,16], intergenerational cultural transmission [5], historical ecology of landscapes and biomes [12,17,18], and even fire-atmosphere-climate feedbacks [19][20][21].…”

From Pleistocene to Pyrocene: Fire Replaces Ice

“…By overlaying the living landscape with a lithic one—taking fossil biomass out of the geologic past, burning it in the present, and releasing its byproducts into the geologic future—they now influence both groups. Behind both lies the pyric transition to a fossil‐fuel civilization (Balch et al, 2016).…”

The interaction of fire and mankind: Introduction

“…Unravelling the emissions of carbon dioxide from a range of combustion sources is no easy matter as pointed out by Balch et al [40] (part of the International Pyrogeography Research Group). This problem is important as the world seeks agreement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning.…”