Late Pleistocene emergence of an anthropogenic fire regime in Australia’s tropical savannahs

Abstract

At the time of European arrival on the Australian continent, sophisticated Indigenous societies practiced land management across Australia’s extensive tropical savannahs. Fire was one of the main tools people used to manipulate fuel loads and connectivity to reduce uncontrolled wildfire, maintain vegetation structure and enhance biodiversity. When this alteration of a ‘natural’ fire regime to a human-dominated fire regime occurred is not known. Here we assessed fire incidence and intensity over the past 150,000 years through a continuous lacustrine record by comparing the accumulation rates of micro-charcoal and stable polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon that form during the combustion of vegetation. We also compared grass (mainly C4) pollen as a percentage of total dryland pollen with the carbon isotope composition of the stable polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon. We established with high statistical certainty that a change in fire regime occurred at least 11,000 years ago from less-frequent, more-intense fires to more-frequent, less-intense fires. This change marked the overprinting of a largely natural fire regime by one at least modulated by Indigenous management. Our findings demonstrate that human fire use has modified fire regimes throughout the Holocene and also show how people have managed the potential for the type of high-intensity fires that are likely to increase in the future.