NEWS
The ghost of
past (and
Current Address: SA
Reprinted From: htt
Jasper Slingsby an
Fire is a key disturbance affecting the
structure, composition and function
of many ecosystems around the
world, and is essential for the healthy
maintenance of the Grassland, Savanna
and Fynbos Biomes of South Africa.
Alteration of fire regimes can have profound
effects on ecosystems, driving
shifts in the dominance of species and
growth forms, or in extreme cases, causing
transitions between fire-tolerant (or
dependent) and fire-sensitive biomes,
such as between Fynbos or Savanna
and Forest.
While humans have influenced fire regimes
in South Africa for tens of millennia
or more, population growth and
the spread of settlements and agriculture
has seen this influence grow exponentially
over the past few centuries
and decades. Humans have become
the most common source of ignitions,
our farms, roads and houses limit the
spread of fire, and we invest great effort
in suppressing fires when and where
they threaten our lives or property.
where our ongoing
ing them currently a
In short, long-term
is not enough. We
mathematical and/o
that allow us to make
tions into the past an
the issues that we be
our collaborators in
this month.
We sought to identif
mine or alter the vu
to fire a priori and u
where we’d expect
the fire regime over
expanded on a con
van Wilgen et al. (2
fire is less frequent i
Unfortunately, detecting, understanding
and managing our influence on fire
regimes and the subsequent impacts on
our ecosystems is incredibly challenging.
While modern satellites allow us to
detect and map fires in near real time,
most records of fire activity extend back
only a few decades, limiting our ability
to detect change.
Even where we do have good records,
by the time we can detect change in
the fire regime the impacts on the ecosystem
may have already occurred and
may be irreversible, leaving few or no
management options.
Using ignition catchments to predict
change in the fire regime
Managing the impact our influence on
fire has on ecosystems requires the tools
not only to determine where we have
altered fire in the past, but to predict
Figure 1: A map of
over South Africa for
across all but the mo
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