Integrating Land Change Science and Savanna Fire Models in West Africa

Abstract

Abstract:Fire is a key component of many land use systems and a determinant of land change. There is a growing concern that climate change will cause more catastrophic fires, but in many areas the impacts will be mediated by human land use practices. In African savannas, for example, fires are frequent and research finds low inter-annual variability in burned areas in places with highly variable rainfall. This regularity of fire suggests that African regimes are humanized, meaning that they are governed by human practices more than climate variation. Although these fire regimes are stable, they vary greatly over space. This paper will determine the reasons for two distinctly different fire regimes in Mali by integrating land change and savanna fire science. The study takes a two pronged approach to examine the causes of fire regimes and the reasons they change. It tests the notion that land cover (not land use) governs fire regimes by combining long term burn scar and vegetation analysis with local interviews. Results indicate that efforts to link fire and land change science, need to focus more on subtle differences in land cover, landscape pattern and human practices, than on drought, land use or fire policy.

The Human Ecology and Geography of Burning in an Unstable Savanna Environment

“…Interviews were conducted between September 1999 and May 2000 in the northern part of the study area and in January 2011 in the southern part (Laris 2002(Laris , 2013. All interviews were conducted in the local languages of Bambara and Malinke.…”

“…Villages were selected in two study areas with different fire regimes (Laris 2013). Men were randomly chosen from a list of all male heads of households provided by village leaders.…”

Effects of climate variability on savannah fire regimes in West Africa

“…This suggests a human control on fires that mediates the climatic influences. Other studies found that fires in African savannahs and especially in West Africa have very regular fire regimes in spite of a variable climate (Giglio et al, 2010;Archibald et al, 2010;Laris, 2013). Recent research works based on a global fire database generated from remotely sensed imagery clearly have shown that the savannahs of western and southern Africa were the areas with the least interannual variability in fires, as well as the most frequently and extensively burned (Giglio et al, 2010;Le Page et al, 2010).…”

“…Several previous studies were performed from mesoscale to local scale with high-resolution multidisciplinary data such as from Laris (2002Laris ( , 2011Laris ( , 2013 and Le Page (2010) on the human role in fire variability. Our study focuses on the regional scale (West Africa), the potential links between climate indexes and burned areas derived from satellite.…”

Wildland Arson as Clandestine Resource Management: A Space–Time Permutation Analysis and Classification of Informal Fire Management Regimes in Georgia, USA

“…Yet, clandestine fire use and management continues around the world (Kull 2002;Laris 2013;Seijo 2005;Tacconi and Ruchiat 2006). This paper asks (1) whether or not informal management regimes persist in the state of Georgia (USA) in the form of unauthorized fire-setting and (2) if those practices can inform disturbance-based land management.…”