The "fire stick farming" hypothesis: Australian Aboriginal foraging strategies, biodiversity, and anthropogenic fire mosaics

Early to Mid-Holocene land use transitions in South Asia: A new archaeological synthesis of potential human impacts

While it is clear that current human impact on the earth system is unprecedented in scope and scale, much less is known about the long-term histories of human land use and their effects on vegetation, carbon cycling, and other factors relevant to climate change. Current debates over the possible importance of human activities since the mid second millennium CE cannot be effectively resolved without evidence-based reconstructions of past land use and its consequences. The goal of the PAGES LandCover 6K working group is to reconstruct human land use and land cover over the past 12,000 years. In this paper, we present the first large-scale synthesis of archaeological evidence for human land use in South Asia at 12 and 6kya, a critical period for the transition to agriculture, arguably one of the land use transitions most consequential in terms of human impact on the Earth system. Perhaps the most important narrative we can pick out is that while there are some shifts in land use across these time windows, hunter-gatherer-fisher-foraging remained the dominant land use, and within this there was a mosaic of strategies exploiting diverse and complex landscapes and ecologies. This is not necessarily a new conclusion-it is not new to state that South Asia is comprised of many niches, but demonstrating the deep time history of how people have adapted to these and adapted them is an important step for modelling the impacts of human populations and thinking about their footprints in a longue-durée perspective. Despite the new development of food production between the early and mid-Holocene by overall area foraging life ways continued as the dominant land use practice into the 6kya time window. The development of agriculture and food production was not unimportant-it is the beginning of a land use that eventually comes to dominate the sub-continent, but at 6kya agriculture was restricted to specific contexts. Across 12kya to 6kya and different land uses, the use of mosaic ecologies, diverse strategies and the importance of water as a resource stand out as shared themes.

More than dirt: Sedimentary ancient DNA and Indigenous Australia

The rise of sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) studies has opened new possibilities for studying past environments. This groundbreaking area of genomics uses sediments to identify organisms, even in cases where macroscopic remains no longer exist. Managing this substrate in Indigenous Australian contexts, however, requires special considerations. Sediments and soils are often considered as waste by-products during archaeological and paleontological excavations and are not typically regulated by the same ethics guidelines utilised in mainstream 'western' research paradigms. Nevertheless, the product of sedaDNA work-genetic information from past fauna, flora, microbial communities and human ancestors-is likely to be of cultural significance and value for Indigenous peoples. This article offers an opinion on the responsibilities of researchers in Australia who engage in research related to this emerging field, particularly when it involves Indigenous communities. One aspect that deserves consideration in such research is the concept of benefit sharing. Benefit sharing refers to the practice of ensuring that the benefits that arise from research are shared equitably with the communities from which the research data were derived. This practice is particularly relevant in research that involves Indigenous communities, who may have unique cultural and spiritual connections to the research material. We argue that the integration of Traditional Knowledges into sedaDNA research would add enormous value to research and its outcomes by providing genomic outputs alongside and within the rich context of multimillennia oral histories.

Case Report: Effects of Environmental Smoke Exposure on Respiratory Conditions-A Report of an Aboriginal Man Fire Hunting for Mud Turtles in the Top End, Northern Territory of Australia

Environmental smoke has been shown to have significant associations with both causation and exacerbation of respiratory conditions. Aboriginal Australians in the Northern Territory (NT) of Australia are disproportionately affected by respiratory illness in comparison with non-Aboriginal Australians. Traditionally, Aboriginal communities have utilized fire for multiple purposes, such as land management practices, cultural ceremonies, hunting, and cooking. In this report, we describe an Aboriginal man who presented with acute exacerbation of airway disease after environmental smoke exposure while being in the close vicinity of "fire hunting" for "mud turtles" from a Top End remote Aboriginal community in the NT of Australia. This report highlights the potential impact of nontobacco environmental smoke exposure contributing to the causation and exacerbation of chronic respiratory conditions among Aboriginal Australians. Hence, further research is warranted to address mitigating strategies in this population.

Shrub cover declined as Indigenous populations expanded across southeast Australia

Wildfires in forests globally have become more frequent and intense because of changes in climate and human management. Shrub layer fuels allow fire to spread vertically to forest canopy, creating high-intensity fires. Our research provides a deep-time perspective on shrub fuel loads in fire-prone southeastern Australia. Comparing 2833 records for vegetation cover, past climate, biomass burning, and human population size across different phases of human occupation, we demonstrated that Indigenous population expansion and cultural fire use resulted in a 50% reduction in shrub cover, from approximately 30% from the early to mid-Holocene (12 to 6 thousand years ago) to 15% during the late to mid-Holocene (6 to 1 thousand years ago). Since the start of British colonization to the present, shrub cover has increased to the highest ever recorded (mean of 35% land cover), increasing the risk of high-intensity fires.

Seed dispersal by Martu peoples promotes the distribution of native plants in arid Australia

Commensal relationships between wild plants and their dispersers play a key ecological and evolutionary role in community structure and function. While non-human dispersers are often considered critical to plant recruitment, human dispersers have received much less attention, especially when it comes to non-domesticated plants. Australia, as a continent historically characterized by economies reliant on non-domesticated plants, is thus a key system for exploring the ecological role of people as seed dispersers in the absence of agriculture. Here, we utilize a controlled observation research design, employing ecological surveys and ethnographic observations to examine how seed dispersal and landscape burning by Martu Aboriginal people affects the distribution of three preferred plants and one (edible, but non-preferred) control species. Using an information theoretic approach, we find that the three preferred plants show evidence of human dispersal, with the strongest evidence supporting anthropogenic dispersal for the wild bush tomato, Solanum diversiflorum.

Blending Indigenous and western science: Quantifying cultural burning impacts in Karuk Aboriginal Territory

The combined effects of Indigenous fire stewardship and lightning ignitions shaped historical fire regimes, landscape patterns, and available resources in many ecosystems globally. The resulting fire regimes created complex fire-vegetation dynamics that were further influenced by biophysical setting, disturbance history, and climate. While there is increasing recognition of Indigenous fire stewardship among western scientists and managers, the extent and purpose of cultural burning is generally absent from the landscape-fire modeling literature and our understanding of ecosystem processes and development. In collaboration with the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources, we developed a transdisciplinary Monte Carlo simulation model of cultural ignition location, frequency, and timing to simulate spatially explicit cultural ignitions across a 264,399-ha landscape within Karuk Aboriginal Territory in northern California. Estimates of cultural ignition parameters were developed with Tribal members and knowledge holders using existing interviews, historical maps, ethnographies, recent ecological studies, contemporary maps, and generational knowledge. Spatial and temporal attributes of cultural burning were explicitly tied to the ecology of specific cultural resources, fuel receptivity, seasonal movement patterns, and spiritual practices. Prior to colonization, cultural burning practices were extensive across the study landscape with an estimated 6972 annual ignitions, averaging approximately 6.5 ignitions per Indigenous fire steward per year. The ignition characteristics we document align closely with data on historical fire regimes and vegetation but differ substantially from the location and timing of contemporary ignitions. This work demonstrates the importance of cultural burning for developing and maintaining the ecosystems present at the time of colonization and underscores the need to work collaboratively with Indigenous communities to restore ecocultural processes in these systems.

The human side of biodiversity: coevolution of the human niche, palaeo-synanthropy and ecosystem complexity in the deep human past

Today's biodiversity crisis fundamentally threatens the habitability of the planet, thus ranking among the primary human challenges of our time. Much emphasis is currently placed on the loss of biodiversity in the Anthropocene, yet these debates often portray biodiversity as a purely natural phenomenon without much consideration of its human dimensions and frequently lack long-term vistas. This paper offers a deep-time perspective on the key role of the evolving human niche in ecosystem functioning and biodiversity dynamics. We summarize research on past hunter-gatherer ecosystem contributions and argue that human-environment feedback systems with important biodiversity consequences are probably a recurrent feature of the Late Pleistocene, perhaps with even deeper roots. We update current understandings of the human niche in this light and suggest that the formation of palaeo-synanthropic niches in other animals proffers a powerful model system to investigate recursive interactions of foragers and ecosystems. Archaeology holds important knowledge here and shows that ecosystem contributions vary greatly in relation to different human lifeways, some of which are lost today. We therefore recommend paying more attention to the intricate relationship between biodiversity and cultural diversity, contending that promotion of the former depends on fostering the latter. This article is part of the theme issue 'Ecological novelty and planetary stewardship: biodiversity dynamics in a transforming biosphere'.

Adapting food environment frameworks to recognize a wild-cultivated continuum

Food environments, or interfaces between consumers and their food systems, are a useful lens for assessing global dietary change. Growing inclusivity of nature-dependent societies in lower-and middle-income countries is driving recent developments in food environment frameworks. Downs et al. (2020) propose a food environment typology that includes: wild, cultivated, informal and formal market environments, where wild and cultivated are "natural food environments." Drawing from transdisciplinary perspectives, this paper argues that wild and cultivated food environments are not dichotomous, but rather exist across diverse landscapes under varying levels of human management and alteration. The adapted typology is applied to a case study of Indigenous Pgaz K'Nyau food environments in San Din Daeng village, Thailand, using the Gallup Poll's Thailand-adapted Diet Quality Questionnaire with additional food source questions. Wild-cultivated food environments, as classified by local participants, were the source of more food items than any other type of food environment (37% of reported food items). The case of Indigenous Pgaz K'Nyau food environments demonstrates the importance of understanding natural food environments along a continuum from wild to cultivated.

Human behaviors driving disease emergence

Interactions between humans, animals, and the environment facilitate zoonotic spillover-the transmission of pathogens from animals to humans. Narratives that cast modern humans as exogenous and disruptive forces that encroach upon "natural" disease systems limit our understanding of human drivers of disease. This review leverages theory from evolutionary anthropology that situates humans as functional components of disease ecologies, to argue that human adaptive strategies to resource acquisition shape predictable patterns of high-risk human-animal interactions, (2) humans construct ecological processes that facilitate spillover, and (3) contemporary patterns of epidemiological risk are emergent properties of interactions between human foraging ecology and niche construction. In turn, disease ecology serves as an important vehicle to link what some cast as opposing bodies of theory in human ecology. Disease control measures should consider human drivers of disease as rational, adaptive, and dynamic and capitalize on our capacity to influence ecological processes to mitigate risk.

The historical ecology of the world's largest tropical country uniquely chronicled by its municipal coat-of-arms symbology

Coats-of-arms representing municipal counties express local patterns of rural economics, natural resource and land use, features of the natural capital, and the cultural heritage of either aborigines or colonists. We reconstruct the subnational economic and political timeline of the world's largest tropical country using municipal coats-of-arms to reinterpret Brazil's historical ecology. We assessed all natural resource, biophysical, agricultural, and ethnocultural elements of 5,197 coats-of-arms (93.3%) distributed throughout Brazil. We extracted socioenvironmental co-variables for any municipality to understand and predict the relationships between social inequality, environmental degradation, and the historical ecology symbology. We analyzed data via ecological networks and structural equation models. Our results show that the portfolio of political-administrative symbology in coats-of-arms is an underutilized tool to understand the history of colonization frontiers. Although Brazil is arguably Earth's most species-rich country, generations of political leaders have historically failed to celebrate this biodiversity, instead prioritizing a symbology depicted by icons of frontier conquest and key natural resources. Brazilian historical ecology reflects the relentless depletion of the natural resource capital while ignoring profound social inequalities. Degradation of natural ecosystems is widespread in Brazilian economy, reflecting a legacy of boom-and-bust rural development that so far has failed to deliver sustainable socioeconomic prosperity.

Climate change adaptation needs a science of culture

There is global consensus that we must immediately prioritize climate change adaptation-change in response to or anticipation of risks from climate change. Some researchers and policymakers urge 'transformative change', a complete break from past practices, yet report having little data on whether new practices reduce the risks communities face, even over the short term. However, researchers have some leads: human communities have long generated solutions to changing climate, and scientists who study culture have examples of effective and persistent solutions. This theme issue discusses cultural adaptation to climate change, and in this paper, we review how processes of biological adaptation, including innovation, modification, selective retention and transmission, shape the landscapes decision-makers care about-from which solutions emerge in communities, to the spread of effective adaptations, to regional or global collective action. We introduce a comprehensive portal of data and models on cultural adaptation to climate change, and we outline ways forward. This article is part of the theme issue 'Climate change adaptation needs a science of culture'.

Incentivizing sustainable fire management in Australia's northern arid spinifex grasslands

Fire management across Australia's fire-prone 1.2 M km2 northern savannas region has been transformed over the past decade supported by the inception of Australia's national regulated emissions reduction market in 2012. Today, incentivised fire management is undertaken over a quarter of that entire region, providing a range of socio-cultural, environmental, and economic benefits, including for remote Indigenous (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) communities and enterprises. Building on those advances, here we explore the emissions abatement potential for expanding incentivised fire management opportunities to include a contiguous fire-prone region, extending to monsoonal but annually lower (<600 mm) and more variable rainfall conditions, supporting predominantly shrubby spinifex (Triodia) hummock grasslands characteristic of much of Australia's deserts and semi-arid rangelands. Adapting a standard methodological approach applied previously for assessing savanna emissions parameters, we first describe fire regime and associated climatic attributes for a proposed ∼850,000 km2 lower rainfall (600-350 mm MAR) focal region. Second, based on regional field assessments of seasonal fuel accumulation, combustion, burnt area patchiness, and accountable methane and nitrous oxide Emission Factor parameters, we find that significant emissions abatement is feasible for regional hummock grasslands. This applies specifically for more frequently burnt sites under higher rainfall conditions if substantial early dry season prescribed fire management is undertaken resulting in marked reduction in late dry season wildfires. The proposed Northern Arid Zone (NAZ) focal envelope is substantially under Indigenous land ownership and management, and in addition to reducing emissions impacts associated with recurrent extensive wildfires, development of commercial landscape-scale fire management opportunities would significantly support social, cultural and biodiversity management aspirations as promoted by Indigenous landowners. Combined with existing regulated savanna fire management regions, inclusion of the NAZ under existing legislated abatement methodologies would effectively provide incentivised fire management covering a quarter of Australia's landmass. This could complement an allied (non-carbon) accredited method valuing combined social, cultural and biodiversity outcomes from enhanced fire management of hummock grasslands. Although the management approach has potential application to other international fire-prone savanna grasslands, caution is required to ensure that such practice does not result in irreversible woody encroachment and undesirable habitat change.

Evidence for hunter-gatherer impacts on raven diet and ecology in the Gravettian of Southern Moravia

The earlier Gravettian of Southern Moravia-the Pavlovian-is notable for the many raven bones (Corvus corax) documented in its faunal assemblages. On the basis of the rich zooarchaeological and settlement data from the Pavlovian, previous work suggested that common ravens were attracted by human domestic activities and subsequently captured by Pavlovian people, presumably for feathers and perhaps food. Here, we report independent δ15N, δ13C and δ34S stable isotope data obtained from 12 adult ravens from the Pavlovian key sites of Předmostí I, Pavlov I and Dolní Věstonice I to test this idea. We show that Pavlovian ravens regularly fed on larger herbivores and especially mammoths, aligning in feeding preferences with contemporaneous Gravettian foragers. We argue that opportunistic-generalist ravens were encouraged by human settlement and carcass provisioning. Our data may thus provide surprisingly early evidence for incipient synanthropism among Palaeolithic ravens. We suggest that anthropogenic manipulation of carrion supply dynamics furnished unique contexts for the emergence of human-oriented animal behaviours, in turn promoting novel human foraging opportunities-dynamics which are therefore important for understanding early hunter-gatherer ecosystem impacts.

Isolating the species element in grass pollen allergy: A review

Grass pollen is a leading cause of allergy in many countries, particularly Europe. Although many elements of grass pollen production and dispersal are quite well researched, gaps still remain around the grass species that are predominant in the air and which of those are most likely to trigger allergy. In this comprehensive review we isolate the species aspect in grass pollen allergy by exploring the interdisciplinary interdependencies between plant ecology, public health, aerobiology, reproductive phenology and molecular ecology. We further identify current research gaps and provide open ended questions and recommendations for future research in an effort to focus the research community to develop novel strategies to combat grass pollen allergy. We emphasise the role of separating temperate and subtropical grasses, identified through divergence in evolutionary history, climate adaptations and flowering times. However, allergen cross-reactivity and the degree of IgE connectivity in sufferers between the two groups remains an area of active research. The importance of future research to identify allergen homology through biomolecular similarity and the connection to species taxonomy and practical implications of this to allergenicity is further emphasised. We also discuss the relevance of eDNA and molecular ecological techniques (DNA metabarcoding, qPCR and ELISA) as important tools in quantifying the connection between the biosphere with the atmosphere. By gaining more understanding of the connection between species-specific atmospheric eDNA and flowering phenology we will further elucidate the importance of species in releasing grass pollen and allergens to the atmosphere and their individual role in grass pollen allergy.

Integrating traditional ecological knowledge into US public land management: Knowledge gaps and research priorities

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is an understanding of natural systems acquired through long-term human interactions with particular landscapes. Traditional knowledge systems complement western scientific disciplines by providing a holistic assessment of ecosystem dynamics and extending the time horizon of ecological observations. Integration of TEK into land management is a key priority of numerous groups, including the United Nations and US public land management agencies; however, TEK principles have rarely been enshrined in national-level US policy or planning. We review over 20 years of TEK literature to describe key applications of TEK to ecological understanding, conservation, restoration and land management generally. By identifying knowledge gaps, we highlight research avenues to support the integration of TEK into US public land management, in order to enhance conservation approaches and participation of historically underrepresented groups, particularly American Indian Tribes, in the stewardship of ancestral lands critical to the practice of living cultural traditions.

Too hot, too cold, or just right: Can wildfire restore dry forests of the interior Pacific Northwest?

As contemporary wildfire activity intensifies across the western United States, there is increasing recognition that a variety of forest management activities are necessary to restore ecosystem function and reduce wildfire hazard in dry forests. However, the pace and scale of current, active forest management is insufficient to address restoration needs. Managed wildfire and landscape-scale prescribed burns hold potential to achieve broad-scale goals but may not achieve desired outcomes where fire severity is too high or too low. To explore the potential for fire alone to restore dry forests, we developed a novel method to predict the range of fire severities most likely to restore historical forest basal area, density, and species composition in forests across eastern Oregon. First, we developed probabilistic tree mortality models for 24 species based on tree characteristics and remotely sensed fire severity from burned field plots. We applied these estimates to unburned stands in four national forests to predict post-fire conditions using multi-scale modeling in a Monte Carlo framework. We compared these results to historical reconstructions to identify fire severities with the highest restoration potential. Generally, we found basal area and density targets could be achieved by a relatively narrow range of moderate-severity fire (roughly 365-560 RdNBR). However, single fire events did not restore species composition in forests that were historically maintained by frequent, low-severity fire. Restorative fire severity ranges for stand basal area and density were strikingly similar for ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and dry mixed-conifer forests across a broad geographic range, in part due to relatively high fire tolerance of large grand (Abies grandis) and white fir (Abies concolor). Our results suggest historical forest conditions created by recurrent fire are not readily restored by single fires and landscapes have likely passed thresholds that preclude the effectiveness of managed wildfire alone as a restoration tool.

Madagascar's fire regimes challenge global assumptions about landscape degradation

Narratives of landscape degradation are often linked to unsustainable fire use by local communities. Madagascar is a case in point: the island is considered globally exceptional, with its remarkable endemic biodiversity viewed as threatened by unsustainable anthropogenic fire. Yet, fire regimes on Madagascar have not been empirically characterised or globally contextualised. Here, we contribute a comparative approach to determining relationships between regional fire regimes and global patterns and trends, applied to Madagascar using MODIS remote sensing data (2003-2019). Rather than a global exception, we show that Madagascar's fire regimes are similar to 88% of tropical burned area with shared climate and vegetation characteristics, and can be considered a microcosm of most tropical fire regimes. From 2003-2019, landscape-scale fire declined across tropical grassy biomes (17%-44% excluding Madagascar), and on Madagascar at a relatively fast rate (36%-46%). Thus, high tree loss anomalies on the island (1.25-4.77× the tropical average) were not explained by any general expansion of landscape-scale fire in grassy biomes. Rather, tree loss anomalies centred in forests, and could not be explained by landscape-scale fire escaping from savannas into forests. Unexpectedly, the highest tree loss anomalies on Madagascar (4.77×) occurred in environments without landscape-scale fire, where the role of small-scale fires (<21 h [0.21 km² ]) is unknown. While landscape-scale fire declined across tropical grassy biomes, trends in tropical forests reflected important differences among regions, indicating a need to better understand regional variation in the anthropogenic drivers of forest loss and fire risk. Our new understanding of Madagascar's fire regimes offers two lessons with global implications: first, landscape-scale fire is declining across tropical grassy biomes and does not explain high tree loss anomalies on Madagascar. Second, landscape-scale fire is not uniformly associated with tropical forest loss, indicating a need for socio-ecological context in framing new narratives of fire and ecosystem degradation.

Rediscovering wild food to diversify production across Australia's agricultural landscapes

Conventional agriculture currently relies on the intensive and expansive growth of a small number of monocultures, this is both risky for food security and is causing substantial environmental degradation. Crops are typically grown far from their native origins, enduring climates, pests, and diseases that they have little evolutionary adaptation to. As a result, farming practices involve modifying the environment to suit the crop, often via practices including vegetation clearing, drainage, irrigation, tilling, and the application of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. One avenue for improvement, however, is the diversification of monoculture agricultural systems with traditional foods native to the area. Native foods benefit from evolutionary history, enabling adaptation to local environmental conditions, reducing the need for environmental modifications and external inputs. Traditional use of native foods in Australia has a rich history, yet the commercial production of native foods remains small compared with conventional crops, such as wheat, barley and sugarcane. Identifying what native crops can grow where would be a first step in scoping potential native food industries and supporting farmers seeking to diversify their cropping. In this study, I modeled the potentially suitable distributions of 177 native food and forage species across Australia, given their climate and soil preferences. The coastal areas of Queensland's wet tropics, south-east Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria were predicted to support the greatest diversity of native food and forage species (as high 80–120 species). These areas also correspond to the nation's most agriculturally intensive areas, including much of the Murray-Darling Basin, suggesting high potential for the diversification of existing intensive monocultures. Native crops with the most expansive potential distribution include Acacia trees, Maloga bean, bush plum, Emu apple, native millet, and bush tomatoes, with these crops largely being tolerant of vast areas of semi-arid conditions. In addition to greater food security, if diverse native cropping results in greater ecosystem service provisioning, through carbon storage, reduced water usage, reduced nutrient runoff, or greater habitat provision, then payment for ecosystem service schemes could also provide supplemental farm income.

Reimagine fire science for the anthropocene

Fire is an integral component of ecosystems globally and a tool that humans have harnessed for millennia. Altered fire regimes are a fundamental cause and consequence of global change, impacting people and the biophysical systems on which they depend. As part of the newly emerging Anthropocene, marked by human-caused climate change and radical changes to ecosystems, fire danger is increasing, and fires are having increasingly devastating impacts on human health, infrastructure, and ecosystem services. Increasing fire danger is a vexing problem that requires deep transdisciplinary, trans-sector, and inclusive partnerships to address. Here, we outline barriers and opportunities in the next generation of fire science and provide guidance for investment in future research. We synthesize insights needed to better address the long-standing challenges of innovation across disciplines to (i) promote coordinated research efforts; (ii) embrace different ways of knowing and knowledge generation; (iii) promote exploration of fundamental science; (iv) capitalize on the "firehose" of data for societal benefit; and (v) integrate human and natural systems into models across multiple scales. Fire science is thus at a critical transitional moment. We need to shift from observation and modeled representations of varying components of climate, people, vegetation, and fire to more integrative and predictive approaches that support pathways toward mitigating and adapting to our increasingly flammable world, including the utilization of fire for human safety and benefit. Only through overcoming institutional silos and accessing knowledge across diverse communities can we effectively undertake research that improves outcomes in our more fiery future.

The response of geophytes to continuous human foraging on the Cape south coast, South Africa and its implications for early hunter-gatherer mobility patterns

Current ecological understanding of plants with underground storage organs (USOs) suggests they have, in general, low rates of recruitment and thus as a resource it should be rapidly exhausted, which likely had implications for hunter-gatherer mobility patterns. We focus on the resilience (defined here as the ability of species to persist after being harvested) of USOs to human foraging. Human foragers harvested all visible USO material from 19 plots spread across six Cape south coast (South Africa) vegetation types for three consecutive years (2015-2017) during the period of peak USO apparency (September-October). We expected the plots to be depleted after the first year of harvesting since the entire storage organ of the USO is removed during foraging, i.e. immediate and substantial declines from the first to the second harvest. However, over 50% of the total weight harvested in 2015 was harvested in 2016 and 2017; only after two consecutive years of harvesting, was there evidence of significantly lower yield (p = 0.034) than the first (2015) harvest. Novel emergence of new species and new individuals in year two and three buffered the decline of harvested USOs. We use our findings to make predictions on hunter-gatherer mobility patterns in this region compared to the Hadza in East Africa and the Alyawara in North Australia.

Large-scale cooperation in small-scale foraging societies

We present evidence that people in small-scale mobile hunter-gatherer societies cooperated in large numbers to produce collective goods. Foragers engaged in large-scale communal hunts and constructed shared capital facilities; they made shared investments in improving the local environment; and they participated in warfare, formed enduring alliances, and established trading networks. Large-scale collective action often played a crucial role in subsistence. The provision of public goods involved the cooperation of many individuals, so each person made only a small contribution. This evidence suggests that large-scale cooperation occurred in the Pleistocene societies that encompass most of human evolutionary history, and therefore it is unlikely that large-scale cooperation in Holocene food producing societies results from an evolved psychology shaped only in small-group interactions. Instead, large-scale human cooperation needs to be explained as an adaptation, likely rooted in distinctive features of human biology, grammatical language, increased cognitive ability, and cumulative cultural adaptation.

Landscape modification by Last Interglacial Neanderthals

Little is known about the antiquity, nature, and scale of Pleistocene hunter-gatherer impact on their ecosystems, despite the importance for studies of conservation and human evolution. Such impact is likely to be limited, mainly because of low population densities, and challenging to detect and interpret in terms of cause-effect dynamics. We present high-resolution paleoenvironmental and archaeological data from the Last Interglacial locality of Neumark-Nord (Germany). Among the factors that shaped vegetation structure and succession in this lake landscape, we identify a distinct ecological footprint of hominin activities, including fire use. We compare these data with evidence from archaeological and baseline sites from the same region. At Neumark-Nord, notably open vegetation coincides with a virtually continuous c. 2000-year-long hominin presence, and the comparative data strongly suggest that hominins were a contributing factor. With an age of c. 125,000 years, Neumark-Nord provides an early example of a hominin role in vegetation transformation.

Distance sampling surveys reveal 17 million vertebrates directly killed by the 2020's wildfires in the Pantanal, Brazil

Anthropogenic factors have significantly influenced the frequency, duration, and intensity of meteorological drought in many regions of the globe, and the increased frequency of wildfires is among the most visible consequences of human-induced climate change. Despite the fire role in determining biodiversity outcomes in different ecosystems, wildfires can cause negative impacts on wildlife. We conducted ground surveys along line transects to estimate the first-order impact of the 2020 wildfires on vertebrates in the Pantanal wetland, Brazil. We adopted the distance sampling technique to estimate the densities and the number of dead vertebrates in the 39,030 square kilometers affected by fire. Our estimates indicate that at least 16.952 million vertebrates were killed immediately by the fires in the Pantanal, demonstrating the impact of such an event in wet savanna ecosystems. The Pantanal case also reminds us that the cumulative impact of widespread burning would be catastrophic, as fire recurrence may lead to the impoverishment of ecosystems and the disruption of their functioning. To overcome this unsustainable scenario, it is necessary to establish proper biomass fuel management to avoid cumulative impacts caused by fire over biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Indigenous knowledge and the shackles of wilderness

The environmental crises currently gripping the Earth have been codified in a new proposed geological epoch: the Anthropocene. This epoch, according to the Anthropocene Working Group, began in the mid-20th century and reflects the "great acceleration" that began with industrialization in Europe [J. Zalasiewicz et al., Anthropocene 19, 55-60 (2017)]. Ironically, European ideals of protecting a pristine "wilderness," free from the damaging role of humans, is still often heralded as the antidote to this human-induced crisis [J. E. M. Watson et al., Nature, 563, 27-30 (2018)]. Despite decades of critical engagement by Indigenous and non-Indigenous observers, large international nongovernmental organizations, philanthropists, global institutions, and nation-states continue to uphold the notion of pristine landscapes as wilderness in conservation ideals and practices. In doing so, dominant global conservation policy and public perceptions still fail to recognize that Indigenous and local peoples have long valued, used, and shaped "high-value" biodiverse landscapes. Moreover, the exclusion of people from many of these places under the guise of wilderness protection has degraded their ecological condition and is hastening the demise of a number of highly valued systems. Rather than denying Indigenous and local peoples' agency, access rights, and knowledge in conserving their territories, we draw upon a series of case studies to argue that wilderness is an inappropriate and dehumanizing construct, and that Indigenous and community conservation areas must be legally recognized and supported to enable socially just, empowering, and sustainable conservation across scale.

Remote Sensing Reveals Lasting Legacies of Land-Use by Small-Scale Foraging Communities in the Southwestern Indian Ocean

Archaeologists interested in the evolution of anthropogenic landscapes have productively adopted Niche Construction Theory (NCT), in order to assess long-term legacies of human-environment interactions. Applications of NCT have especially been used to elucidate co-evolutionary dynamics in agricultural and pastoral systems. Meanwhile, foraging and/or highly mobile small-scale communities, often thought of as less intensive in terms of land-use than agropastoral economies, have received less theoretical and analytical attention from a landscape perspective. Here we address this lacuna by contributing a novel remote sensing approach for investigating legacies of human-environment interaction on landscapes that have a long history of co-evolution with highly mobile foraging communities. Our study is centered on coastal southwest Madagascar, a region inhabited by foraging and fishing communities for close to two millennia. Despite significant environmental changes in southwest Madagascar’s environment following human settlement, including a wave of faunal extinctions, little is known about the scale, pace and nature of anthropogenic landscape modification. Archaeological deposits in this area generally bear ephemeral traces of past human activity and do not exhibit readily visible signatures of intensive land-use and landscape modification (e.g., agricultural modifications, monumental architecture, etc.). In this paper we use high-resolution satellite imagery and vegetative indices to reveal a legacy of human-landscape co-evolution by comparing the characteristics – vegetative productivity and geochemical properties – of archaeological sites to those of locations with no documented archaeological materials. Then, we use a random forest (RF) algorithm and spatial statistics to quantify the extent of archaeological activity and use this analysis to contextualize modern-day human-environment dynamics. Our results demonstrate that coastal foraging communities in southwest Madagascar over the past 1,000 years have extensively altered the landscape. Our study thus expands the temporal and spatial scales at which we can evaluate human-environment dynamics on Madagascar, providing new opportunities to study early periods of the island’s human history when mobile foraging communities were the dominant drivers of landscape change.

Drought Coincided with, but Does Not Explain, Late Holocene Megafauna Extinctions in SW Madagascar

Climate drying could have transformed ecosystems in southern Madagascar during recent millennia by contributing to the extinction of endemic megafauna. However, the extent of regional aridification during the past 2000 years is poorly known, as are the responses of endemic animals and economically important livestock to drying. We inferred ~1600 years of climate change around Lake Ranobe, SW Madagascar, using oxygen isotope analyses of monospecific freshwater ostracods (Bradleystrandesia cf. fuscata) and elemental analyses of lake core sediment. We inferred past changes in habitat and diet of introduced and extinct endemic megaherbivores using bone collagen stable isotope and 14C datasets (n = 63). Extinct pygmy hippos and multiple giant lemur species disappeared from the vicinity of Ranobe during a dry interval ~1000–700 cal yr BP, but the simultaneous appearance of introduced cattle, high charcoal concentrations, and other evidence of human activity confound inference of drought-driven extirpations. Unlike the endemic megafauna, relatively low collagen stable nitrogen isotope values among cattle suggest they survived dry intervals by exploiting patches of wet habitat. Although megafaunal extirpations coincided with drought in SW Madagascar, coupled data from bone and lake sediments do not support the hypothesis that extinct megafauna populations collapsed solely because of drought. Given that the reliance of livestock on mesic patches will become more important in the face of projected climate drying, we argue that sustainable conservation of spiny forests in SW Madagascar should support local livelihoods by ensuring that zebu have access to mesic habitat. Additionally, the current interactions between pastoralism and riparian habitats should be studied to help conserve the island’s biodiversity.

Conservation of Earth's biodiversity is embedded in Indigenous fire stewardship

Large and severe wildfires are becoming increasingly common worldwide and are having extraordinary impacts on people and the species and ecosystems on which they depend. Indigenous peoples comprise only 5% of the world’s population but protect approximately 85% of the world’s biodiversity through stewardship of Indigenous-managed lands. Much of this is attributed to long-term and widespread relationships with and dependence on fire, which has been applied as a tool for managing landscapes for millennia. Fortunately, the revitalization of Indigenous fire stewardship is demonstrating the value of routinely applying controlled fire to adapt to changing environments while promoting desired landscapes, habitats, and species and supporting subsistence practices and livelihoods.

Increasingly, severe wildfires have led to declines in biodiversity across all of Earth’s vegetated biomes [D. B. McWethy et al., Nat. Sustain. 2, 797–804 (2019)]. Unfortunately, the displacement of Indigenous peoples and place-based societies that rely on and routinely practice fire stewardship has resulted in significant declines in biodiversity and the functional roles of people in shaping pyrodiverse systems [R. Bliege Bird et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 117, 12904–12914 (2020)]. With the aim of assessing the impacts of Indigenous fire stewardship on biodiversity and species function across Earth’s major terrestrial biomes, we conducted a review of relevant primary data papers published from 1900 to present. We examined how the frequency, seasonality, and severity of human-ignited fires can improve or reduce reported metrics of biodiversity and habitat heterogeneity as well as changes to species composition across a range of taxa and spatial and temporal scales. A total of 79% of applicable studies reported increases in biodiversity as a result of fire stewardship, and 63% concluded that habitat heterogeneity was increased by the use of fire. All studies reported that fire stewardship occurred outside of the window of uncontrollable fire activity, and plants (woody and nonwoody vegetation) were the most intensively studied life forms. Three studies reported declines in biodiversity associated with increases in the use of high-severity fire as a result of the disruption of Indigenous-controlled fire regimes with the onset of colonization. Supporting Indigenous-led fire stewardship can assist with reviving important cultural practices while protecting human communities from increasingly severe wildfires, enhancing biodiversity, and increasing ecosystem heterogeneity.

Rainfall-Linked Megafires as Innate Fire Regime Elements in Arid Australian Spinifex (Triodia spp.) Grasslands

Large, high-severity wildfires, or “megafires,” occur periodically in arid Australian spinifex (Triodia spp.) grasslands after high rainfall periods that trigger fuel accumulation. Proponents of the patch-burn mosaic (PBM) hypothesis suggest that these fires are unprecedented in the modern era and were formerly constrained by Aboriginal patch burning that kept landscape fuel levels low. This assumption deserves scrutiny, as evidence from fire-prone systems globally indicates that weather factors are the primary determinant behind megafire incidence, and that fuel management does not mitigate such fires during periods of climatic extreme. We reviewed explorer’s diaries, anthropologist’s reports, and remotely sensed data from the Australian Western Desert for evidence of large rainfall-linked fires during the pre-contact period when traditional Aboriginal patch burning was still being practiced. We used only observations that contained empiric estimates of fire sizes. Concurrently, we employed remote rainfall data and the Oceanic Niño Index to relate fire size to likely seasonal conditions at the time the observations were made. Numerous records were found of small fires during periods of average and below-average rainfall conditions, but no evidence of large-scale fires during these times. By contrast, there was strong evidence of large-scale wildfires during a high-rainfall period in the early 1870s, some of which are estimated to have burnt areas up to 700,000 ha. Our literature review also identified several Western Desert Aboriginal mythologies that refer to large-scale conflagrations. As oral traditions sometimes corroborate historic events, these myths may add further evidence that large fires are an inherent feature of spinifex grassland fire regimes. Overall, the results suggest that, contrary to predictions of the PBM hypothesis, traditional Aboriginal burning did not modulate spinifex fire size during periods of extreme-high arid zone rainfall. The mechanism behind this is that plant assemblages in seral spinifex vegetation comprise highly flammable non-spinifex tussock grasses that rapidly accumulate high fuel loads under favorable precipitation conditions. Our finding that fuel management does not prevent megafires under extreme conditions in arid Australia has parallels with the primacy of climatic factors as drivers of megafires in the forests of temperate Australia.

Using satellite imagery to evaluate precontact Aboriginal foraging habitats in the Australian Western Desert

Modern satellite imaging offers radical new insights of the challenges and opportunities confronting traditional Aboriginal ecology and land use in Australia's Western Desert. We model the likely dynamics of historic and precontact desert land use using Earth observation data to identify the distribution of suitable foraging habitats. Suitability was modelled for an ideal environmental scenario, based on satellite observations of maximal water abundance, vegetation greenness, and terrain ruggedness. Our model shows that the highest-ranked foraging habitats do not align with land systems or bioregions that have been used in previous reconstructions of Australian prehistory. We identify impoverished desert areas where unsuitable foraging conditions have likely persisted since early in the last glacial cycle, and in which occupation would always have been rare. These findings lead us to reconsider past patterns of land use and the predicted archaeological signature of earlier desert peoples.

Anthropological Prosociality via Sub-Group Level Selection

A perennial challenge of evolutionary psychology is explaining prosocial traits such as a preference for fairness rather than inequality, compassion towards suffering, and an instinctive ability to coordinate within small teams. Considering recent fossil evidence and a novel logical test, we deem present explanations insufficiently explanatory of the divergence of hominins. In answering this question, we focus on the divergence of hominins from the last common ancestor (LCA) shared with Pan. We consider recent fossil discoveries that indicate the LCA was bipedal, which reduces the cogency of this explanation for hominin development. We also review evolutionary theory that claims to explain how hominins developed into modern humans, however it is found that no mechanism differentiates hominins from other primates. Either the mechanism was available to the last common ancestor (LCA) (with P. troglodytes as its proxy), or because early hominins had insufficient cognition to utilise the mechanism. A novel mechanism, sub-group level selection (sGLS) is hypothesised by triangulating two pieces of data rarely considered by evolutionary biologists. These are behavioural dimorphism of Pan (chimpanzees and bonobos) that remain identifiable in modern humans, and the social behaviour of primate troops in a savannah ecology. We then contend that sGLS supplied an exponential effect which was available to LCA who left the forest, but was not sufficiently available to any other primates. In conclusion, while only indirectly supported by various evidence, sGLS is found to be singularly and persuasively explanatory of human's unique evolutionary story.

Mapping past human land use using archaeological data: A new classification for global land use synthesis and data harmonization

In the 12,000 years preceding the Industrial Revolution, human activities led to significant changes in land cover, plant and animal distributions, surface hydrology, and biochemical cycles. Earth system models suggest that this anthropogenic land cover change influenced regional and global climate. However, the representation of past land use in earth system models is currently oversimplified. As a result, there are large uncertainties in the current understanding of the past and current state of the earth system. In order to improve representation of the variety and scale of impacts that past land use had on the earth system, a global effort is underway to aggregate and synthesize archaeological and historical evidence of land use systems. Here we present a simple, hierarchical classification of land use systems designed to be used with archaeological and historical data at a global scale and a schema of codes that identify land use practices common to a range of systems, both implemented in a geospatial database. The classification scheme and database resulted from an extensive process of consultation with researchers worldwide. Our scheme is designed to deliver consistent, empirically robust data for the improvement of land use models, while simultaneously allowing for a comparative, detailed mapping of land use relevant to the needs of historical scholars. To illustrate the benefits of the classification scheme and methods for mapping historical land use, we apply it to Mesopotamia and Arabia at 6 kya (c. 4000 BCE). The scheme will be used to describe land use by the Past Global Changes (PAGES) LandCover6k working group, an international project comprised of archaeologists, historians, geographers, paleoecologists, and modelers. Beyond this, the scheme has a wide utility for creating a common language between research and policy communities, linking archaeologists with climate modelers, biodiversity conservation workers and initiatives.

Mobilizing the past to shape a better Anthropocene

As our planet emerges into a new epoch in which humans dominate the Earth system, it is imperative that societies initiate a new phase of responsible environmental stewardship. Here we argue that information from the past has a valuable role to play in enhancing the sustainability and resilience of our societies. We highlight the ways that past data can be mobilized for a variety of efforts, from supporting conservation to increasing agricultural sustainability and food security. At a practical level, solutions from the past often do not require fossil fuels, can be locally run and managed, and have been tested over the long term. Past failures reveal non-viable solutions and expose vulnerabilities. To more effectively leverage increasing knowledge about the past, we advocate greater cross-disciplinary collaboration, systematic engagement with stakeholders and policymakers, and approaches that bring together the best of the past with the cutting-edge technologies and solutions of tomorrow.

Ecosystem engineering in the Quaternary of the West Coast of South Africa

Despite advances in our understanding of the geographic and temporal scope of the Paleolithic record, we know remarkably little about the evolutionary and ecological consequences of changes in human behavior. Recent inquiries suggest that human evolution reflects a long history of interconnections between the behavior of humans and their surrounding ecosystems (e.g., niche construction). Developing expectations to identify such phenomena is remarkably difficult because it requires understanding the multi-generational impacts of changes in behavior. These long-term dynamics require insights into the emergent phenomena that alter selective pressures over longer time periods which are not possible to observe, and are also not intuitive based on observations derived from ethnographic time scales. Generative models show promise for probing these potentially unexpected consequences of human-environment interaction. Changes in the uses of landscapes may have long term implications for the environments that hominins occupied. We explore other potential proxies of behavior and examine how modeling may provide expectations for a variety of phenomena.

Human behavioral ecology and niche construction

We examine the relationship between niche construction theory (NCT) and human behavioral ecology (HBE), two branches of evolutionary science that are important sources of theory in archeology. We distinguish between formal models of niche construction as an evolutionary process, and uses of niche construction to refer to a kind of human behavior. Formal models from NCT examine how environmental modification can change the selection pressures that organisms face. In contrast, formal models from HBE predict behavior assuming people behave adaptively in their local setting, and can be used to predict when and why people engage in niche construction. We emphasize that HBE as a field is much broader than foraging theory and can incorporate social and cultural influences on decision-making. We demonstrate how these approaches can be formally incorporated in a multi-inheritance framework for evolutionary research, and argue that archeologists can best contribute to evolutionary theory by building and testing models that flexibly incorporate HBE and NCT elements.

The emergence and intensification of early hunter-gatherer niche construction

Hunter-gatherers, especially Pleistocene examples, are not well-represented in archeological studies of niche construction. However, as the role of humans in shaping environments over long time scales becomes increasingly apparent, it is critical to develop archeological proxies and testable hypotheses about early hunter-gatherer impacts. Modern foragers engage in niche constructive behaviors aimed at maintaining or increasing the productivity of their environments, and these may have had significant ecological consequences over later human evolution. In some cases, they may also represent behaviors unique to modern Homo sapiens. Archeological and paleoenvironmental data show that African hunter-gatherers were niche constructors in diverse environments, which have legacies in how ecosystems function today. These can be conceptualized as behaviorally mediated trophic cascades, and tested using archeological and paleoenvironmental proxies. Thus, large-scale niche construction behavior is possible to identify at deeper time scales, and may be key to understanding the emergence of modern humans.

Want climate-change adaptation? Evolutionary theory can help

The idea of adaptation, in which an organism or population becomes better suited to its environment, is used in a variety of disciplines. Originating in evolutionary biology, adaptation has been a central theme in biological anthropology and human ecology. More recently, the study of adaptation in the context of climate change has become an important topic of research in the social sciences. While there are clearly commonalities in the different uses of the concept of adaptation in these fields, there are also substantial differences. We describe these differences and suggest that the study of climate-change adaptation could benefit from a re-integration with biological and evolutionary conceptions of human adaptation. This integration would allow us to employ the substantial theoretical tools of evolutionary biology and anthropology to understand what promotes or impedes adaptation. The evolutionary perspective on adaptation focuses on diversity because diversity drives adaptive evolution. Population structures are also critical in facilitating or preventing adaptation to local environmental conditions. This suggests that climate-change adaptation should focus on the sources of innovation and social structures that nurture innovations and allow them to spread. Truly innovative ideas are likely to arise on the periphery of cohesive social groups and spread inward. The evolutionary perspective also suggests that we pay careful attention to correlated traits, which can distort adaptive trajectories, as well as to the importance of risk management in adaptations to variable or uncertain environments. Finally, we suggest that climate-change adaptation could benefit from a broader study of how local groups adapt to their dynamic environments, a process we call "autochthonous adaptation."

Climate, landscape diversity, and food sovereignty in arid Australia: The firestick farming hypothesis

OBJECTIVE

Climate change has long been recognized as a significant driver of dietary diversity and dietary quality. An often overlooked aspect of climate change are shifts in fire regimes, which have the potential to drastically affect landscape diversity, species distributions, and ultimately, human diets. Here, we investigate whether the fire regimes shaped by Indigenous Australians change landscape diversity in ways that improve dietary quality, considering both the diversity and the quantity of traditional foods in the diet.

METHODS

We use structural equation modeling to explore two causal models of dietary quality, one focused on the direct effects of climate change and resource depression, the other incorporating the dietary effects of landscape diversity, itself a product of fire-created patchiness. We draw on a focal camp dataset covering 10 years of observations of Martu foraging income in the Western Desert of Australia.

RESULTS

We find strong support for the hypothesis that fire-created patchiness improves diet quality. Climate change (cumulative 2-year rainfall) has only an indirect effect on dietary quality; the availability of traditional foods is mediated primarily through the landscape diversity shaped by fire.

CONCLUSIONS

Our model suggests that the loss of the indigenous fire mosaic may lead to worsening availability of traditional foods, measured as both caloric intake and diet diversity. Because the effects of rainfall are mediated through landscape diversity, increased rainfall may not compensate for the recent changes in fire regimes resulting from the loss of Aboriginal fire from the landscape.

Fire mosaics and habitat choice in nomadic foragers

In the mid-1950s Western Desert of Australia, Aboriginal populations were in decline as families left for ration depots, cattle stations, and mission settlements. In the context of reduced population density, an ideal free-distribution model predicts landscape use should contract to the most productive habitats, and people should avoid areas that show more signs of extensive prior use. However, ecological or social facilitation due to Allee effects (positive density dependence) would predict that the intensity of past habitat use should correlate positively with habitat use. We analyzed fire footprints and fire mosaics from the accumulation of several years of landscape use visible on a 35,300-km2 mosaic of aerial photographs covering much of contemporary Indigenous Martu Native Title Lands imaged between May and August 1953. Structural equation modeling revealed that, consistent with an Allee ideal free distribution, there was a positive relationship between the extent of fire mosaics and the intensity of recent use, and this was consistent across habitats regardless of their quality. Fire mosaics build up in regions with low cost of access to water, high intrinsic food availability, and good access to trade opportunities; these mosaics (constrained by water access during the winter) then draw people back in subsequent years or seasons, largely independent of intrinsic habitat quality. Our results suggest that the positive feedback effects of landscape burning can substantially change the way people value landscapes, affecting mobility and settlement by increasing sedentism and local population density.

Climate-human interaction associated with southeast Australian megafauna extinction patterns

The mechanisms leading to megafauna (>44 kg) extinctions in Late Pleistocene (126,000-12,000 years ago) Australia are highly contested because standard chronological analyses rely on scarce data of varying quality and ignore spatial complexity. Relevant archaeological and palaeontological records are most often also biased by differential preservation resulting in under-representated older events. Chronological analyses have attributed megafaunal extinctions to climate change, humans, or a combination of the two, but rarely consider spatial variation in extinction patterns, initial human appearance trajectories, and palaeoclimate change together. Here we develop a statistical approach to infer spatio-temporal trajectories of megafauna extirpations (local extinctions) and initial human appearance in south-eastern Australia. We identify a combined climate-human effect on regional extirpation patterns suggesting that small, mobile Aboriginal populations potentially needed access to drinkable water to survive arid ecosystems, but were simultaneously constrained by climate-dependent net landscape primary productivity. Thus, the co-drivers of megafauna extirpations were themselves constrained by the spatial distribution of climate-dependent water sources.

Seasonal fire management by traditional cattle ranchers prevents the spread of wildfire in the Brazilian Cerrado

The use of fire by cattle ranchers is a major source of conflict between conservationists and local communities in tropical savannas. We evaluate the role of traditional pastoral management in wildfire prevention in two protected areas within the Brazilian savanna. Fine-grain field data from transect walks and interviews were combined with geospatial data at landscape scale to compare fire regimes in community-managed areas with those in government-managed areas. Local pastoral management creates seasonal mosaic patterns of burnings performed for productive activities and for deliberate landscape management, i.e. to protect fire-sensitive vegetation and avoid wildfires. Whereas government-managed areas were affected by large biennial late dry season wildfires, community-managed areas with a regular fire regime suffered less damage. These systems are under threat and poorly understood by researchers and environmental managers. In order to improve fire management in tropical savannas, greater understanding of pastoral management practices and their spatiotemporal dimensions is required.