People, El Niño southern oscillation and fire in Australia: fire regimes and climate controls in hummock grasslands
Open accessAbstract
While evidence mounts that indigenous burning has a significant role in shaping pyrodiversity, the processes explaining its variation across local and external biophysical systems remain limited. This is especially the case with studies of climate–fire interactions, which only recognize an effect of humans on the fire regime when they act independently of climate. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that an anthropogenic fire regime (fire incidence, size and extent) does not covary with climate. In the lightning regime, positive El Niño southern oscillation (ENSO) values increase lightning fire incidence, whereas La Niña (and associated increases in prior rainfall) increase fire size. ENSO has the opposite effect in the Martu regime, decreasing ignitions in El Niño conditions without affecting fire size. Anthropogenic ignition rates covary positively with high antecedent rainfall, whereas fire size varies only with high temperatures and unpredictable winds, which may reduce control over fire spread. However, total area burned is similarly predicted by antecedent rainfall in both regimes, but is driven by increases in fire size in the lightning regime, and fire number in the anthropogenic regime. We conclude that anthropogenic regimes covary with climatic variation, but detecting the human–climate–fire interaction requires multiple measures of both fire regime and climate. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The interaction of fire and mankind’.
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Antecedent moisture conditions (10-y averages of PDSI) are a proxy for fuel production.
“compared with decadal variability in PDSI by using 10-y averages of antecedent moisture conditions (27), a proxy for fuel production (B).”
From Indigenous impacts on North American Great Plains fire regimes of the past millennium (2018) · cites this paper as [27]
The Methods (page unavailable) use cumulative 24-month antecedent rainfall as a measure of fuel load and say rainfall affects fuel growth. This supports the general idea that prior moisture can proxy fuel production, but the paper does not use PDSI or 10-year averages. (LLM, conf=0.87)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredFire activity and fuels respond to previous moisture.
“As fire activity and fuels respond to previous moisture, decadal variability in the PDSI record was measured by creating a 10-y antecedent average of annual PDSI values (PDSI ant10 ).”
From Indigenous impacts on North American Great Plains fire regimes of the past millennium (2018) · cites this paper as [27]
This study lends support to the growing body of work indicating that coupled human-natural fire regimes should be understood as integral parts of food webs.
“our study lends support to the growing body of work that indicates that coupled human-natural fire regimes should be understood as integral parts of food webs (27,49,68).”
From Indigenous impacts on North American Great Plains fire regimes of the past millennium (2018) · cites this paper as [27]
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Bliege Bird, R., Bird, D. W., & Codding, B. F.
- Affiliations
- Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- University of Utah (US)
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2016-06-05
- Volume
- 371
- Issue
- 1696
- Pages
- 20150343
- ISSN
- 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-2970
- PMC
- PMC4874418
- OpenAlex
- W2398070095
- Cited by
- 54
- References
- 61
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 8
- FWCI
- 5.18
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Stanford University Woods Institute for the Environment (112426)
- Directorate for Biological Sciences (BCS-0850664)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Fire effects on ecosystems
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Rangeland and Wildlife Management
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
- Keywords
- ENSO, fire regimes, fire-climate interactions, lightning fires, anthropogenic ignition, antecedent rainfall, fire size, fire spread, pyrodiversity, La Niña, anthropogenic climate change
- MeSH terms
- Australia, Fires, Humans, El Nino-Southern Oscillation, Grassland
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