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Fire, people and ecosystem change in Pleistocene Australia

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-19, 02:29 authored by Christopher JohnsonChristopher Johnson
Since the 1960s, Australian scientists have speculated on the impact of human arrival on fire regimes in Australia, and on the relationship of landscape fire to extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna of Australia. These speculations have produced a series of contrasting hypotheses that can now be tested using evidence collected over the past two decades. In the present paper, I summarise those hypotheses and review that evidence. The main conclusions of this are that (1) the effects of people on fire regimes in the Pleistocene were modest at the continental scale, and difficult to distinguish from climatic controls on fire, (2) the arrival of people triggered extinction of Australia’s megafauna, but fire had little or no role in the extinction of those animals, which was probably due primarily to hunting and (3) megafaunal extinction is likely to have caused a cascade of changes that included increased fire, but only in some environments. We do not yet understand what environmental factors controlled the strength and nature of cascading effects of megafaunal extinction. This is an important topic for future research.

History

Publication title

Australian Journal of Botany

Volume

64

Issue

7-8

Pagination

643-651

ISSN

0067-1924

Department/School

School of Natural Sciences

Publisher

CSIRO Publishing

Place of publication

150 Oxford St, Po Box 1139, Collingwood, Australia, Victoria, 3066

Rights statement

Journal compilation ?Copyright CSIRO 2016

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Terrestrial biodiversity

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