Abstract
Although it has long been recognised that human activities affect fire regimes, the interactions between humans and fire are complex, imperfectly understood, constantly evolving, and lacking any kind of integrative global framework. Many different approaches are used to study human-fire interactions, but in general they have arisen in different disciplinary contexts to address highly specific questions. Models of human-fire interactions range from conceptual local models to numerical global models. However, given that each type of model is highly selective about which aspects of human-fire interactions to include, the insights gained from these models are often limited and contradictory, which can make them a poor basis for developing fire-related policy and management practices. Here, we first review different approaches to modelling human-fire interactions and then discuss ways in which these different approaches could be synthesised to provide a more holistic approach to understanding human-fire interactions. We argue that the theory underpinning many types of models was developed using only limited amounts of data and that, in an increasingly data-rich world, it is important to re-examine model assumptions in a more systematic way. All of the models are designed to have practical outcomes but are necessarily simplifications of reality and as a result of differences in focus, scale and complexity, frequently yield radically different assessments of what might happen. We argue that it should be possible to combine the strengths and benefits of different types of model through enchaining the different models, for example from global down to local scales or vice versa. There are also opportunities for explicit coupling of different kinds of model, for example including agent-based representation of human actions in a global fire model. Finally, we stress the need for co-production of models to ensure that the resulting products serve the widest possible community.
Highlights
Occurring landscape fires, or wildfires, have been an integral component of the Earth System for 350–400 million years, since the development of vegetation on land (Scott, 2000; Bowman et al, 2009)
This is a serious concern because, as the differences in the trends in fire weather versus burnt area amply illustrate, consideration of limited aspects of the climate-fire-human nexus could lead to radically different approaches to fire management and the development of policies for adaptation/mitigation actions
As a basis for exploring commonalities across models, we describe some of the types of models that are currently being used to examine human-fire interactions. These models differ in the spatial and temporal scale at which they operate, and the resolution and complexity that biophysical processes and humans are represented (Figure 1). We structure this discussion moving from the most people-centric models, which are differentiated to some extent by the spatial scale at which they are developed and used, to the physics-centric models that incorporate humanfire interactions to some extent
Summary
Wildfires, have been an integral component of the Earth System for 350–400 million years, since the development of vegetation on land (Scott, 2000; Bowman et al, 2009). Despite the increased prevalence of fire weather, satellite datasets show a decrease in burned area in recent years (Van Lierop et al, 2015; Doerr and Santín, 2016; Andela et al, 2017; Lizundia-Loiola et al, 2020a; Lizundia-Loiola et al, 2020b) This trend is not statistically significant at the global scale (Forkel et al, 2019a) but is important in certain regions, most noticeably in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the recognition that integration of these different perspectives and approaches would be beneficial, and promote a better understanding of pyrogeography (Bowman et al, 2009), little progress has been made towards such an integration This is a serious concern because, as the differences in the trends in fire weather versus burnt area amply illustrate, consideration of limited aspects of the climate-fire-human nexus could lead to radically different approaches to fire management and the development of policies for adaptation/mitigation actions. We propose a way forward for improving our understanding of human-fire interactions, providing a more solid foundation for predicting future fire regimes and a more comprehensive basis for building fire management plans and policies
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