Fire Ecology and Ethnobiology

Session Organizer, Chair & Discussant: Cynthia Fowler

Friday, May 17

Anthropologists and ecologists have been studying fire’s evolutionary and cultural significance for more than 100 years.  For several decades ethnobiologists have addressed the ways and reasons people use fire to manage resources and the effects of anthropogenic fires on resources.  Attention to fire ecology has blossomed during the previous decade within anthropology as well as in other academic disciplines and in applied fields (e.g., land management).  The burgeoning interest in fire ecology coincides with explosive growth in climate change science.  Now is a strategic time for ethnobiologists to discuss the ways our work converges with fire ecology and climate change science.  This panel brings scholars together to discuss the social, ecological, and meteorological processes that ensue when fire encounters biological organisms.  Anthropogenic fires and fires caused by lightning, falling rocks, volcanoes, and spontaneous combustion link to multi-scale, multi-species processes ranging from the biographies of individual organisms, to fluxes in biological communities, and population-level dynamics.  Ethnobiologists contribute to our understandings of the ways human knowledge and behavior intersects with the biological processes that cause or are caused by fire in the contemporary world and throughout human history.