Tag: fires
Implications of local policies and institutions on the adoption of improved fallows in eastern Zambia
Planted-tree fallows (syn. improved fallows) have demonstrated great biophysical potential for improving soil fertility on smallholders’ farms but efforts to scale up their adoption to more farming households are constrained by lack of permanent ownership rights over land, incidence of bush fires and browsing of tree biomass by livestock. To resolve these institutional bottlenecks, some traditional authorities in Zambia enacted bylaws to prohibit these incursions. Using a combination of village workshops, expert opinion surveys and structured questionnaires, this study assessed the effectiveness of the bylaws across the major cultural communities in eastern Zambia, identified factors that influence the effectiveness of the bylaws and the lessons emanating from the bylaws in the scaling up of improved fallows. The results indicate that fire poses greater risks to the scaling up of agroforestry than does grazing in terms of the risk of occurrence and the extent of damage. Respondents identified mice hunters and `jealous’ neighbors as main causes of fire outbreaks. The effectiveness of the bylaws is influenced by many factors such as ambiguous interpretation of the bylaws, relying exclusively on moral persuasion to enforce the bylaws and lack of well defined responsibilities for enforcing the bylaws, conflict of economic interests among different stakeholders within the communities. Formal documentation of the bylaws will be helpful, but that would not be an exclusive panacea to solve all the constraints. The pattern of distribution of benefits (or costs) of an agricultural technology among various sectors of a community may be important factors that affect widespread adoption of a technology. Technological characteristics are important but not exclusive condition for sustained widespread adoption of soil fertility management options. Privatizing seasonal commons is an important issue in the development of institutional regulations within communities. Policy dialogue among community members, increased awareness and diversification of options appear to be the way forward to improve the effectiveness of the bylaws.
Fire and land use effects on biodiversity in the southern Sumatran wetlands
We studied the long-term effects of an intensified fire regime following logging and altered land use practices on the biodiversity and successional dynamics of forests on three sites (Sugihan, Mesuji, and Pampangan) of roughly 300 km2 each, distributed across the continuous wetland ecosystem of southern Sumatra. Satellite image analysis and ecological and socio-economic surveys were combined to reveal the vegetation characteristics, and links to fire, land use history, and site conditions. Since the 1970s–1980s, this ecosystem has been subject to widespread repeated fires associated with or following intensive logging, transmigration, and plantation development, sonor or swamp rice cultivation, and other local resource use. Burn traces in the soil profile suggest that earlier fire episodes were far more limited in their coverage than the severe and frequent burning of the recent past. The result has been a rapid transformation from mature, high mixed species forests to sedge grasslands, savannas, and open to dense mono-specific stands of fast-growing fire-adapted species. Current vegetation types are largely differentiated by structural rather than compositional differences, which are significantly linked to fire frequency or time since last fire. The more frequent and recent the fires, the more open the landscape, with reduced density and basal area of trees. At present, the area is very species-poor. Most patches in Sugihan and Mesuji are dominated by a single species—Melaleuca cajuputi—in the tree, sapling, and seedling layers except for degraded mixed forests which have a mix of species in all layers. Degraded mixed forests were more recently logged and burnt just once in 1991. Pampangan has a different species composition with all patches dominated by Combretocarpus rotundatus in the tree layer, which is linked to greater organic matter depth. However, in the deep peats of Pampangan the sapling and seedling layers are also dominated by Melaleuca cajuputi in most patches suggesting a future shift in overstory composition to this more freshwater wetland-adapted species. This compositional shift is likely due to peast subsidence and increased likelihood of flooding following repeated burning. The live fuel structure with tall, dense lower strata to mid-strata of flammable herbaceous and woody species and scattered to dense tree cover renders all the vegetation types extremely fire-prone in dry years. The flammable vegetation combined with increased development and population pressures on these last frontiers makes contiued wides pread fires highly likely. This will lead to further simplification of species composition and structure, and degradation of the landscape into treeless plains. Resource depletion has led to falling incomes and fewer livelihood options in southern Sumatra. Fires and their negative impacts have expanded into the northern provinces of Sumatra as well with timber and oil palm plantation development and/or migrating populations in search of livelihood options. Given the large contribution of peatland fires to trans-boundary haze, carbon emissions, and global warming, reducing and controlling fires in the wetlands of Sumatra is of high priority. Fire management issues and options for the wetlands of southern Sumatra are discussed.
Are Village Forest licences for rural development or conservation? A case study from Jambi Province, Indonesia
The Government of Indonesia has initiated a forest and agrarian reform process aiming to bring at least 30% of state forests under Community-Based Forest Management (CBFM) schemes (10 million ha in 2015, 40 million ha to 2019). Additional elements of this reform process include the restitution of use rights in indigenous territories and resolution of conflict over forest land.Jambi has been seen as a successful province in terms of CBFM development. One of the schemes promoted is called Village Forest (Hutan Desa). A local conservation and development NGO based in Jambi, has supported local governments to extend the Village Forest scheme. It has been recognized as a mechanism to resolve land disputes and for communities to be ready for REDD+. It has also been expected to help increase forest sustainability and improve community welfare.Governmental Regulation PP.49/Menhut-II/2008 sets the legal foundation for the establishment of a Village Forest. The objective is the welfare and development of village communities. The official body supervising the application process is the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, which receives formal proposals from the head of a district that have been drafted by an applicant village.Village Forest areas are state forests managed by a village institution through a management licence for a period of 35 years. The licence is allocated based on the administrative area of the village and can be granted over areas categorized as either ‘protection’ or ‘production’ state forests. In protection forest areas, permitted activities are limited to reforestation, harvesting of non-timber forest products (NTFPs), eco-tourism and protection efforts through REDD+ and rewards for environmental services’ schemes. Inproduction forests, the village community, besides collecting NTFPs, can harvest 50 m3 of timber per year for village use. A village that is granted the licence (Surat Keputusan) is required to establish a committee (Lembaga Pengelola Hutan Desa/LPHD) to manage it. The committee is also responsible for submitting detailed annual (RTHD) and long-term (RKHD) work plans.At the time of writing, more than 30 villages have been granted Village Forest licenses in Jambi Province. However, little research has been done into how villages manage after receiving a licence. This brief analyses the challenges and threats posed by the licence in three villages in Jambi.
Effects of shifting cultivation and forest fire
Fire has always been apparent to some extent in humid tropical forest as an agent of disturbance leading to forest renewal through succession and even to long-term changes in the biome (Flenley, 1979; 1992; 1998). Under climatic conditions of occasional drought there is an element of natural forest fires occurring without human interference (Goldammer, 1992) although this is difficult to establish because the use of fire also links back to the earliest forms of agriculture (Boserup, 1965; Steensberg, 1993). Today however, the role of man is more evident than ever before in understanding the dynamics of fire, humans and vegetation ecology (Uhl, 1998). Perceptions by lowlanders of a loss of ‘forest catchment functions’ due to ‘upland shifting cultivators’ are often strong but these may not be based on a clear understanding of the cause-effect chains involved. For example, most major and capital cities in South East Asia have been built on floodplains at the mouths of rivers, i.e. in areas where occasional flooding is to be expected regardless of the forest cover of the uplands (Hamilton and King, 1983). When floods do occur, however, land use change in the uplands provides an easy scapegoat, especially if the uplanders have a different ethnic and cultural background, as for example in Northern Thailand. These conflicts over land use change in the uplands have reached such an intensity in some areas that basic research findings are not likely to modify the perceptions and standpoints of different stakeholders in the conflict (Van Noordwijk, pers. obs.).
Unprecedented fire activity above the Arctic Circle linked to rising temperatures
Arctic fires can release large amounts of carbon from permafrost peatlands. Satellite observations reveal that fires burned ~4.7 million hectares in 2019 and 2020, accounting for 44% of the total burned area in the Siberian Arctic for the entire 1982–2020 period. The summer of 2020 was the warmest in four decades, with fires burning an unprecedentedly large area of carbon-rich soils. We show that factors of fire associated with temperature have increased in recent decades and identified a near-exponential relationship between these factors and annual burned area. Large fires in the Arctic are likely to recur with climatic warming before mid-century, because the temperature trend is reaching a threshold in which small increases in temperature are associated with exponential increases in the area burned.
Estimating Long-Term Average Carbon Emissions from Fires in Non-Forest Ecosystems in the Temperate Belt
Research into pyrogenic carbon emissions in the temperate belt of the Russian Federation has traditionally focused on the impact of forest fires. Nevertheless, ecosystems in which wildfires also make a significant contribution to anthropogenic CO2 emissions are poorly studied. We evaluated the carbon emissions of fires in the non-forest ecosystems of the Middle Amur Lowland, in the Khabarovsk Territory of the Russian Federation. Our study is based on long-term Earth remote sensing data of medium spatial resolution (Landsat 5, 7, and 8) and expeditionary studies (2018–2021). The assessment of carbon directly emitted from wildfires in meadow and meadow–mire temperate ecosystems in the Middle Amur lowland shows that specific emissions from such ecosystems vary, from 1.09 t/ha in dwarf shrub–sphagnum and sphagnum–ledum and sedge–reed fens to 6.01 t/ha in reed–forb, forb, reed, and sedge meadows. Meanwhile, carbon emissions specifically from fires in meadow and meadow–mire ecosystems are less significant—often an order of magnitude less than carbon emissions from forest fires (which reach 37 tC/ha). However, due to their high frequency and the large areas of land burned annually, the total carbon emissions from such fires are comparable to annual emissions from fires in forested areas. The results obtained show that the inadequacy of the methods used in the automatic mapping of burns leads to a significant underestimation of the area of grassland fires and carbon emissions from non-forest fires.