Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 What is Australian rainforest?
- 3 The sclerophyll problem
- 4 The edaphic theory I. The control of rainforest by soil phosphorus
- 5 The edaphic theory II. Soil types, drainage, and fertility
- 6 The climate theory I. Water stress
- 7 The climate theory II. Light and temperature
- 8 The fire theory I. Field evidence
- 9 The fire theory II. Fire, nutrient cycling, and topography
- 10 The fire theory III. Fire frequency, succession, and ecological drift
- 11 The fire theory IV. Aboriginal landscape burning
- 12 The fire theory V. Aridity and the evolution of flammable forests
- 13 The fire theory VI. Fire management and rainforest conservation
- 14 Summary
- References
- Index
11 - The fire theory IV. Aboriginal landscape burning
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 What is Australian rainforest?
- 3 The sclerophyll problem
- 4 The edaphic theory I. The control of rainforest by soil phosphorus
- 5 The edaphic theory II. Soil types, drainage, and fertility
- 6 The climate theory I. Water stress
- 7 The climate theory II. Light and temperature
- 8 The fire theory I. Field evidence
- 9 The fire theory II. Fire, nutrient cycling, and topography
- 10 The fire theory III. Fire frequency, succession, and ecological drift
- 11 The fire theory IV. Aboriginal landscape burning
- 12 The fire theory V. Aridity and the evolution of flammable forests
- 13 The fire theory VI. Fire management and rainforest conservation
- 14 Summary
- References
- Index
Summary
The realisation that fire is important in determining rainforest boundaries has naturally led many authors to speculate on the effect of Aboriginal landscape burning. This line of thinking has a long history. Domin (1911) asserted that ‘secondary’ Eucalyptus forests had replaced rainforest in southern Queensland and that this change was due to ‘aboriginal inhabitants, mostly by means of bushfires’. Currently, two temporal perspectives dominate this topic. The first focuses on the possible ecological and evolutionary consequences of the arrival in Australia of a new ignition source: Homo sapiens. Some authors have suggested that a sharp increase in the frequency of fires caused the contraction of rainforest vegetation and possibly stimulated the evolution of fire-adapted Australian vegetation during the last ice age. For instance, Truswell (1993) concluded a review of the Cainozoic history of Australian vegetation with the thought that ‘the expansion of the eucalypts, probably at the expense of the drier rainforests and Casuarinaceae woodlands, is a more recent story and has possible links with human land-management practices’. The second perspective concerns the more recent past, and argues that landscape burning by Aborigines had controlled the distribution of rainforest throughout Australia. This view is largely the product of ecological studies of rainforest boundary dynamics. Several authors consider fire as being an environmental constant through geological time (Mount 1979; Horton 1982). They see Aboriginal landscape burning as being irrelevant in determining current and past vegetation patterns.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Australian RainforestsIslands of Green in a Land of Fire, pp. 218 - 249Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000