Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
deliberately to afford a view of the surrounding savannah, with silk-cotton
trees being particularly favoured.
Third, Kissia people from further south inhabited 'forest fallows'
(afforested patches growing on previously cultivated land) for a variety of
reasons. They afforded families a degree of independence from their home
communities, while offering the chance to pursue traditional forest-based
agriculture. At the heart of this agriculture were (and remain) crops that
required a humid microclimate and shelter from direct heat and strong
wind that forest patches offered. At various points in Kissidougou's history,
this involved planting kola trees, whose caffeinated fruit is edible and was
traded with Kuranko peoples to the north. Similarly, coffee was grown in
forest islands from the 1930s for trade purposes, later still bananas. What's
more, cattle could be grazed on the island edges, and benefit from tree
shelter during the hot season, along with the residents of island settlements
themselves.
Fourth, to protect cultivated plots in the savannah and forest islands, the
deliberate burning of grass early in the dry season became common prac-
tice among forest island residents. This practice prevented the build up of
stored energy in late season grasses that often resulted in very intense savan-
nah fires. It thereby permitted deciduous tree species to increase in number
and density at forest island edges because these were normally suppressed
by such late season fires. In addition, the harvesting of grasses to make and
replenish the roofs of family homes inside the forests reduced the risk of
intense fires in edge areas. Relatedly, many island communities created fire-
breaks
within
islands to protect older trees, homes, cattle, crops and people
from especially dangerous savannah fire events.
Finally, because of changing gender relations within Kissidougou's forest
island communities, more women had been able to cultivate their own cash
crops from the 1950s onwards. This produced more 'gardening' around and
in between islands and, once fallowed, these cultivated sites tended to be
colonised by trees and shrubs rather than grasses (for reasons mentioned
previously).
I have necessarily simplified a complex story of anthropogenic environ-
mental change in Kissidougou. This story is derived from local farmers' own
accounts of their land use practices and cultural habits, so too those of
their forebears. That Fairhead and Leach took these accounts very seriously
differentiates their representation of the forest-savannah mosaic from that
of Guinea's forestry officials going back to Valentin's time. The accounts
suggest that ordinary land users in Kissidougou have helped to bring the
forest-savannah transition zone further north (not south) as a result of
their ordinary subsistence and cash-cropping practices. These land users
can be seen as a
component
of ecosystems (not exogenous forces), switching
biomass characteristics between two or more different states in a transitional
zone where the 'climax' vegetation is uncertain. They suggest too, though
I haven't detailed it in the previous paragraphs, that forests and trees have
