A Burning Question: Can Long-term Data Inform Fire Management in the Twenty-first Century? - Biodiversity Conservation and Environmental Change - page 80

changes more accurately (<http://www3.nd.edu/~paleolab/paleonproject/>). These model-
ling initiatives make the vital connections between past, present and future that are needed for
effective ecosystem management in a dynamic and changing world.
Learning from traditional management of fire
Some cultures have retained traditional fire management techniques that benefit biodiver-
sity and sustain livelihoods. Studying traditional fire methods can provide an invaluable
model for modern fire management that both protects biodiversity and sustains a wide range
of ecosystem services. Management methods that have stood the test of time and contributed
to sustainable natural resource management are often inherently adaptive, allowing rapid
response to changing environmental conditions (see Chapters 6 and 7) (Berkes et al. 2000).
For example, patch mosaic burning (see above) is a re-emerging paradigm for fire manage-
ment, which involves starting fires over small areas of vegetation as they dry out over the
course of the dry season. This approach increases patch diversity, creating a fine-scale mosaic
of burnt and regenerating vegetation of different post-fire ages; thus pyrodiversity begets bio-
diversity (Figure 4.5) (Parr and Brockett 1999, Parr and Andersen 2006, Allen 2008). Patch
mosaic burns maintain areas of open, grassy habitat, alongside refuges for fire-sensitive spe-
cies, thereby providing a range of habitats and increasing biodiversity (Bowman 2001, Laris
2002, 2013, Bowman et al. 2011). Nutrient availability is enhanced and the short-term product-
ivity of herbaceous plants is increased, benefiting both wild and domestic herbivores, and
enhancing opportunities for hunting. Without such management, fires would tend to occur
later in the dry season and burn more intensely and widely due to the availability of dry
standing biomass. Such intense fires are more likely to cause contraction of fire-sensitive
elements, and may rarely erupt into a 'firestorm' where flames leap above the herbaceous
layer into tree canopies, potentially causing tree mortality. Under patch mosaic burning, fire
is more frequent, and more evenly spread throughout the dry season, leading to less intense
and spatially more restricted fires (Allen 2008).
Loss of traditional fire management has led to decreased heterogeneity in some fire-prone
ecosystems of Australia, North America, and the Mediterranean region (Delcourt and Del-
court 1997, Delcourt et al. 1998, Parr and Brockett 1999, Keeley 2002, Stephens et al. 2007,
Bjorkman and Vellend 2010, Bowman et al. 2011, Coughlan and Petty 2012, Scharf 2014). In
Australia, loss of landscape heterogeneity and traditional knowledge, overgrazing, as well as
the presence of exotic species and public fear of fire, means that it is difficult to reverse the
effects of European fire management (Bowman 1998). However, fears of massive bushfires
may help to reinstate pre-emptive, prescribed fires, especially as drier conditions with more
fires are predicted in the future (Bowman et al. 2011, Bowman and Murphy 2011). New fire
management approaches are learning from traditional fire management techniques. For
example in the savannas of northern Australia, the West Arnhem Land Fire Abatement pro-
ject (WALFA) incorporates and restores aboriginal fire management, which had been dis-
rupted by European settlement and centralization, and is the first ever carbon offset project
based on fire management (<http://www.nailsma.org.au/walfa-west-arnhem-land-ire-
abatement-project>) (Russel-Smith et al. 2013). As well as cultural, natural resource, and