Fire on earth : an introduction

Preface xiii     Acknowledgements xv     About the Authors xvii     About the Companion Website xix     PART ONE FIRE IN THE EARTH SYSTEM 1     Preface to part one 2     Chapter 1 What is fire? 3     1.1 How fire starts and initially spreads 3     1.2 Lightning and other ignition sources 4     1.3 The charring process 6     1.4 Pyrolysis products 7     1.5 Fire types 10     1.6 Peat fires 14     1.7 Fire effects on soils 15     1.8 Post-fire erosion-deposition 18     1.9 Fire and vegetation 22     1.10 Fire and climate 26     1.11 Fire triangles 30     1.12 Fire return intervals 30     1.13 How we study fire: satellites 31     1.14 Modelling fire occurrence 38     1.15 Climate forcing 42     1.16 Scales of fire occurrence 44     Further reading 45     Chapter 2 Fire in the fossil record: recognition 47     2.1 Fire proxies: fire scars and charcoal 47     2.2 The problem of nomenclature: black carbon, char, charcoal, soot and elemental carbon 49     2.3 How we study charcoal: microscopical and chemical techniques 51     2.4 Charcoal as an information-rich source 56     2.5 Charcoal reflectance and temperature 56     2.6 Uses of charcoal 58     2.7 Fire intensity/severity 59     2.8 Deep time studies 60     2.9 Pre-requisite for fire: fuel - the evolution of plants 61     2.10 Charcoal in sedimentary systems 62     Further reading 63     Chapter 3 Fire in the fossil record: earth system processes 65     3.1 Fire and oxygen 65     3.2 Fire feedbacks 67     3.3 Systems diagrams 67     3.4 Charcoal as proxy for atmospheric oxygen 69     3.5 Burning experiments - fire spread 69     3.6 Fire and the terrestrial system 70     Further reading 72     Chapter 4 The geological history of fire in deep time: 420 million years to 2 million years ago 73     4.1 Periods of high and low fire, and implications 73     4.2 The first fires 73     4.3 The rise of fire 75     4.4 Fire in the high-oxygen Paleozoic world 77     4.5 Collapse of fire systems 80     4.6 Fire at the Triassic-Jurassic boundary 82     4.7 Jurassic variation 82     4.8 Cretaceous fires 84     4.9 Fire at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-P or K-T) boundary 87     4.10 Paleocene fires 88     4.11 Fires across the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) 88     4.12 Dampening of fire systems 89     4.13 Rise of the grass-fire cycle 89     Further reading 89     Chapter 5 The geological history of fire - the last two million years 91     5.1 Problems of Quaternary fire history 91     5.2 The Paleofire working group: techniques and analysis 93     5.3 Fire and climate cycles 97     5.4 Fire and humans: the fossil evidence 98     5.5 Fire and the industrial society 101     Further reading 101     References for part one 103     PART TWO BIOLOGY OF FIRE 111     Preface to part two 112     Chapter 6 Pyrogeography - temporal and spatial patterns of fire 113     6.1 Fire and life 113     6.2 Global climate, vegetation patterns and fire 113     6.3 Pyrogeography 116     6.4 Fire and the control of biome boundaries 121     6.5 The fire regime concept 125     6.6 Fire ecology 128     6.7 Conclusion 129     Further reading 129     Chapter 7 Plants and fire 131     7.1 Introduction 131     7.2 Fire and plant traits 131     7.3 Fire regimes and the characteristic suite of fire plant traits 137     7.4 Evolution of fire traits 140     7.5 Summary and implications 145     Further reading 145     General reading 146     Chapter 8 Fire and fauna 147     8.1 Direct effects of fire on fauna 147     8.2 The effect of fire regimes on fauna 148     8.3 The landscape mosaic and pyrodiversity 150     8.4 The effect of fauna on fire regimes 152     8.5 Fire and the evolution of fauna 154     8.6 Summary 155     Further reading 155     Chapter 9 Fire as an ecosystem process 157     9.1 Introduction 157     9.2 Fire and erosion 157     9.3 Fire and nutrient cycling 160     9.4 Fire and pedogenesis 163     9.5 Fire and atmospheric chemistry 164     9.6 Fire and climate 165     9.7 Summary 168     Further reading 169     Chapter 10 Fire and anthropogenic environmental change 171     10.1 Introduction 171     10.2 Prehistoric impacts 171     10.3 Prehistoric fire management 174     10.4 Contemporary fire management 176     10.5 Climate change 177     10.6 Fire and carbon management 180     10.7 Fire regime switches: a major challenge for fire ecology 180     10.8 Invasive plants and altered fire regimes 184     10.9 Conclusion 187     Further reading 187     References for part two 189     PART THREE ANTHROPOGENIC FIRE 193     Preface to part three 194     Chapter 11 Fire creature 195     11.1 Early hominins: spark of creation 195     11.2 Aboriginal fire: control over ignition 198     11.3 Cultivated fire: control over combustibles 206     Contents ix     11.4 Ideas and institutions: lore and ritual 220     11.5 Narrative arcs (and equants) 221     Further reading 229     Chapter 12 A new epoch of fire: the anthropocene 231     12.1 The Great Disruption 231     12.2 The pyric transition 232     12.3 Enlightenment and empire 236     12.4 Scaling the transition 238     12.5 After the revolution 245     Further reading 257     Chapter 13 Fire management 259     13.1 Introducing integrated fire management 259     13.2 Two realms: managing the pyric transition 260     13.3 Strategies 261     13.4 Institutions: ordering fire 272     13.5 Ideas: conceptions of fire 277     13.6 Fire management: selected examples 279     Further reading 289     References and further reading for part three 291     PART FOUR THE SCIENCE AND ART OF WILDLAND FIRE BEHAVIOUR PREDICTION 295     Preface to part four 296     Chapter 14 Fundamentals of wildland fire as a physical process 297     14.1 Introduction 297     14.2 The basics of combustion and heat transfer 298     14.3 The wildland fire environment concept 303     14.4 Characterization of wildland fire behaviour 315     14.5 Extreme wildland fire behaviour phenomena 329     14.6 Field methods of measuring and quantifying wildland fire behaviour 336     14.7 Towards increasing our understanding of wildland fire behaviour 337     Further reading 339     Chapter 15 Estimating free-burning wildland fire behaviour 341     15.1 Introduction 341     15.2 A historical sketch of wildland fire behaviour research 342     15.3 Models, systems and guides for predicting wildland fire behaviour 350     15.4 Limitations on the accuracy of model predictions of wildland fire behaviour 359     15.5 The wildland fire behaviour prediction process 363     15.6 Specialized support in assessing wildland fire behaviour 370     15.7 Looking ahead 371     Further reading 372     Chapter 16 Fire management applications of wildland fire behaviour knowledge 373     16.1 Introduction 373     16.2 Wildfire suppression 376     x Contents     16.3 Wildland firefighter safety 378     16.4 Community wildland fire protection 382     16.5 Fuels management 383     16.6 Prediction of fire effects 388     16.7 Getting on the road towards self-improvement 389     Further reading 390     References for part four 393     Index 405