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WG2 - Fire, Nature, and Culture

April 19-24, 2010

Abstract

Understanding the drivers of fire regimes demands reflection on many different perspectives that are difficult to disaggregate, yet can be broadly considered in the domains of nature or culture. Indeed, cultural attitudes may have impeded appreciation of fire as a fundamental ecological factor in many ecosystems. Fire, has been a purely natural phenomenon with a deep geological history, although wielded by humans it becomes an emergent property of nature and culture. This has profound implications for management of flammable landscapes, and makes attempts to return fire regimes to a natural pre-human state a futile objective, especially in a time of rapid climate change and chronic greenhouse gas pollution.

The goal for this meeting is for us to come together and represent our individual thinking about how the human-nature nexus should be thought about, represented, and analyzed in scholarly projects. Anyone working in or thinking about flammable landscapes implicitly or explicitly has a theory about human ignitions spanning the continuum from irrelevant to causal.  The problem is that the basis of this thinking is often opaque, evaded or muddled. We will develop a framework that incorporates the various perspectives on the role, importance, and interaction of natural and cultural drivers of global fire. We will collectively address: (i) How can human and natural influences be unscrambled in current and past fire activity; and (ii) What is the significance of this nature-culture debate for global change and fire management? To address the latter, each participant is challenged to present their position on the importance of humans and fire as if they were asked to do a media interview for a national news grab, or to make a policy recommendation.

Meeting outline:
•    Early start on Monday: 8AM
•    Talks 15–20 min followed by group discussion
•    Daily summary of talks and take-home points, revisited during second part
•    Talks concluded by Wednesday lunchtime
•    Wednesday we will self-select into writing groups and settle on some report back targets for Thursday and Friday

Field trips:
•    Tuesday afternoon trip (starting ~3:45PM to evening dinner at Carla D’Antonio’s house). On Tuesday late afternoon we will briefly look at the wildland – urban interface surrounding fire prone Santa Barbara – this will help ground our discussion about the reality of fire and humans. This trip will conclude around sunset, with dinner following at Carla’s house (so Tuesday will be a long day).
•    Saturday (all day). We will have an informal field trip to the back country for an all-day hike, followed by some refreshments in the wine growing district behind Santa Barbara.  

Wednesday Beach Retreat at Rick Halsey’s

On Wednesday evening we have scheduled a barbeque on a deck overlooking the Pacific (thanks to Jon Keeley and Rick Halsey for his hospitality).