Answer

Ecology and the Environment

1. Three variables that make fire regime

• Fire intensity
• Time interval between fires
• Type of combustion

2. Define the hypothesis pyro diversity begets biodiversity

• It is the complex interactions and feedbacks between fire regimes, biodiversity and ecosystem effects. This is whereby humans can promote biodiversity through manipulation of spatio-temporal component of fire regimes.

1. Do you agree with the hypothesis? No. why? According to the major research project in southern eastern Australia’s semi-arid eucalypt shrub lands, there was no positive relation between the Shannon-wiener diversity of post fire age-classes in the local area (2-km radius) and the abundance of individual species.
2. Provide one example of how humans directly and one example of how humans indirectly influence fire regimes.

• Directly; by manipulating the intensity and extent of fires
• Indirectly; by influencing the abundance and distribution of various trophic guilds through hunting and animal husbandry.

4. Describe how bison and fires interact and affect trophic interactions in the North American tall grass prairie (see Bowman et al, Figure 4). What would happen if fire were eliminated from this landscape?

• Bison can reinforce fine grained fire mosaics in North America tall grass prairie ecosystems as their grazing minimizes biomass and alters local species composition.

• The interactions and feedbacks that create pyric herbivory are ecologically will be highly reduced.

5. How do cultural fire regimes differ from natural fire regimes?

• Cultural fire regimes are influenced by changing the frequency seasonality, extent, intensity and resultant severities of fires whereas natural regimes whereas natural fire regimes are influenced by biological evolution and global biogeochemical cycles, making fire integral to the functioning of some biomes

6. List five ways American Tribes used fire to promote their livelihood

• They used fire when hunting, for crop improvement, for pest control, habitat diversity and for travel route maintenance.

7. Describe two methods of how western knowledge and traditional knowledge can work together to improve fire management. 

• Consulting with tribal elders and other community members during planning and implementation of land management activities and fire use.
• Improving communication between tribes and federal agencies to enhance successful cross jurisdiction fire management.

8. Describe how the wildlife-urban-interface (WUI) complicates fire management.

• It increases the cost of wildfire suppression requiring more expenditure from federal budgets.

9. Define a prescribed fire and a wildfire. How does management of these fire types differ?

• Wildfire is an unplanned wild land fire including unauthorized human caused fires whereas prescribed fire is planned fire.
• The management differs in that for unplanned fire identification of multiple objectives have to be carried out in order to select the most appropriate strategy to achieve objectives while the for planned fires the objective is to put the fire out.

10. What are the challenges with using traditional knowledge and western knowledge in research?

• Lack of communication between managers and local communities.
• Misunderstanding can arise during management of fires if cultural importance of a particular value or threated at risk resource is conveyed.

11. Write out the citations for both papers using Ecology formatting.

Bowman, D. M., Perry, G. L., Higgins, S. I., Johnson, C. N., Fuhlendorf, S. D., & Murphy, B. P.             (2016). Pyrodiversity is the coupling of biodiversity and fire regimes in food          webs. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological     Sciences, 371(1696), 20150169.

Lake, F. K., Wright, V., Morgan, P., McFadzen, M., McWethy, D., & Stevens-Rumann, C.          (2017). Returning fire to the land: celebrating traditional knowledge and fire. Journal of         Forestry, 115(5), 343-353.