Fire mosaics and habitat choice in nomadic foragers
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Significance: Models of human habitat choice and landscape use assume that people have negative effects on resource availability, which causes them to avoid regions that are already occupied or that show signs of extensive past use in favor of regions of higher quality. We show that when people engage in activities that increase resource productivity, like burning, there is the potential for these improvements to change habitat preferences in favor of places that have been previously modified and occupied by people. This process changes the way we think about intensification (and the origins of broad-spectrum economies), which may arise not from the negative effects of people on resources, but from the positive (and often unintentional) feedbacks between people and their environments.
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Burning that promoted wild resources and forage for preferred game allowed persistent places to remain productive in spite of moderate levels of resource use, likely due to Allee effects created by cultural burning.
“Burning that promoted wild resources and forage for preferred game allowed these persistent places to remain productive in spite of moderate levels of resource use (60), likely due to Allee effects created by cultural burning (29).”
From Tree rings reveal persistent Western Apache (Ndee) fire stewardship and niche construction in the American Southwest (2025) · cites this paper as [29]
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Social memory and niche construction in a hypervariable environment
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Evidence for hunter-gatherer impacts on raven diet and ecology in the Gravettian of Southern Moravia
Baumann, C., Hussain, S. T., Roblíčková, M., Riede, F., Mannino, M. A., & Bocherens, H. (2023) · Nature Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1038/s41559-023-02107-8 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
Glowacki, L. (2020) · Biosyst. · doi:10.1016/j.biosystems.2020.104257 · Cited by 21 · see citing works
Fire and human management of late Holocene ecosystems in southern Africa
Davies, B., Power, M. J., Braun, D. R., Douglass, M., Mosher, S. G., Quick, L. J., Esteban, I., Sealy, J. C., Parkington, J. E., & Faith, J. T. (2022) · Quaternary Science Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107600 · Cited by 20 · see citing works
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Microhabitat Variability in Human Evolution
Patalano, R., Hamilton, R. J., Finestone, E. M., Amano, N., Heddell-Stevens, P., Itambu, M., Petraglia, M. D., & Roberts, P. (2021) · Frontiers in Earth Science · doi:10.3389/feart.2021.787669 · Cited by 21 · see citing works
European colonization and the emergence of novel fire regimes in southeast Australia
Adeleye, M. A., Connor, S., Haberle, S. G., Herbert, A., & Brown, J. R. (2021) · The Anthropocene Review · doi:10.1177/20530196211044630 · Cited by 18 · see citing works
Women’s subsistence strategies predict fertility across cultures, but context matters
Page, A. E., Ringen, E. J., Koster, J., Mulder, M. B., Kramer, K. L., Shenk, M. K., Stieglitz, J., Starkweather, K. E., Ziker, J. P., Boyette, A. H., et al. (2024) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2318181121 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
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Davis, D. S., & Douglass, K. (2021) · Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution · doi:10.3389/fevo.2021.689399 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
Niche Construction and Long-Term Trajectories of Food Production
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Hunter-gatherer impact on European interglacial vegetation: A modelling approach
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Incentivizing sustainable fire management in Australia's northern arid spinifex grasslands
Yates, C., Evans, J. D., Vernooij, R., Eames, T., Muir, E., Holmes, J., Edwards, A., & Russell‐Smith, J. (2023) · Journal of Environmental Management · doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.118384 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
Feral ecologies of the human deep past: multispecies archaeology and palaeo‐synanthropy
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Forager mobility, landscape learning and the peopling of Late Pleistocene North America
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Localized impact of livestock settlements on vegetation patterns in fir forests of Kashmir Himalaya
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How do invasive predators and their native prey respond to prescribed fire?
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Seed dispersal by Martu peoples promotes the distribution of native plants in arid Australia
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“…ecological consequences of cultural burning by foragers may have generated reinforcing feedbacks for continued use of particular areas via niche construction ( 28 ) and Allee effects—increased fitness or niche productivity positively correlated with population density and intensity of use ( 29 ).”
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Ideal distribution models and the tempo of agricultural development in a windward valley of Hawaiʻi
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Fisher, R., Legge, S., Catt, G., & Cliff, H. B. (2025) · International Journal of Wildland Fire · doi:10.1071/wf25002 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Commodification of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in 17th century southern New England
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Aboriginal fires modify an ideal free distribution
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Xi, S., Liu, H., Zhang, J., He, R., & Jiang, S. C. (2025) · International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology · doi:10.1007/s13762-024-06324-x · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Food storage, mobility, and the density-dependence of hunter-gatherer movement ecology
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Key factors affecting NH3-N in the Huaihe River Basin due to human activities
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Resource Acquisition Risk and the Division of Labor: Austral Lessons for Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology
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Figueroa, A. J. (2021) · SMU Scholar (Southern Methodist University)
More than “Information in the Head”
Fuentes, A., Downey, G., & Gillett, A. J. (2026) · Current Anthropology · doi:10.1086/740965
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Aboriginal Homelands and Economy in Australia's Western Desert
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Self-citationThe loss of an Indigenous‐maintained She‐Oak woodland in southeast Australia
Romano, A., Kennedy, P., Magee, H., Mullett, R., & Fletcher, M. (2026) · Geographical Research · doi:10.1111/1745-5871.70082
Creative destruction: from fire ecology to management principles—a conceptual review
Potiriadi, I., Christopoulou, A. N., Dimitrakopoulos, P. G., & Αριανούτσου, Μ. (2026) · Frontiers in Forests and Global Change · doi:10.3389/ffgc.2026.1882526
- Authors
- Bliege Bird, R., McGuire, C., Bird, D. W., Price, M. H., Zeanah, D., & Nimmo, D. G.
- Affiliations
- Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16801;
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- California State University, Sacramento (US)
- Charles Sturt University (AU)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2020-05-27
- Volume
- 117
- Issue
- 23
- Pages
- 12904-12914
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC7293616
- OpenAlex
- W3029620858
- Cited by
- 64
- References
- 100
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 8
- FWCI
- 4.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- ScholarSphere (Penn State Libraries) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (SBR#1459880)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Fire effects on ecosystems
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Australian Indigenous Culture and History
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Rangeland and Wildlife Management
- Keywords
- fire mosaics, habitat selection, ideal free distribution, water access, food availability, settlement patterns, sedentism, population density, indigenous land rights, human mobility
- MeSH terms
- Australia, Conservation of Natural Resources, Fires, Humans, Population Density, Territoriality, Ecosystem
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