Contemporary Land Management Research Articles

Bridging Geo-Data and Natural Gas Pipeline Design Standards: A Systematic Review of BIM-GIS Integration for Natural Gas Pipeline Asset Management

In today’s world, effective management and the use of spatial data are of great importance in many sectors. Industries such as land management, asset management, and infrastructure management are areas where spatial data are heavily utilized. Advanced technologies such as Geographic Information Systems (GISs) and Building Information Modeling (BIM) are used in the processes of collecting, analyzing, and managing geographically enabled data (geo-data). These technologies enable the effective processing of large datasets, improve decision-making processes based on geographic information, and facilitate more efficient collaboration across sectors. This study conducts an in-depth examination of the existing literature on asset management, infrastructure management, and BIM-GIS integration using bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review methods. Bibliometric analysis is employed to determine statistical values such as current research trends, frequently cited authors, most used keywords, and country performances in the relevant field. This study’s results highlight future research trends and significant gaps in the areas of asset management, infrastructure management, natural gas pipelines, and BIM-GIS integration. In particular, this study demonstrates the critical importance of asset management and BIM-GIS integration for sustainable infrastructure design, construction, and management. In this context, attention is drawn to the importance of data standardization, digitization, systematic integration, and contemporary land management requirements.

Measuring the immeasurable: A structural equation modeling approach to assessing soil health

Soil health is recognized as an important ecosystem property sensitive to human impact. As a concept, soil health cannot be directly measured, and so assessment and modeling efforts largely rely upon key biological, chemical, and physical indicators. Efforts to develop an overall soil health index are largely lacking due to significant statistical challenges and the necessity for regional calibration. Taken from the field of educational research, structural equation modeling (SEM) is an attractive approach to enhance the reliability and validity of soil health scoring. Therefore, SEM may be utilized to advance research efforts to understand management practices impacts on soil health. Our objectives were to develop a robust scoring function that (i) captures the concept of soil health and latent variables, (ii) adjusts scores by inherent soil properties and legacy of intensive land use to adequately reflect our regional conditions and contemporary land management, and (iii) meets the diverse practitioner needs. Through this process, we refined our minimum dataset of soil health indicators and reconceptualized soil health indicators into functional properties. Our results support the development of a robust single level or a multilevel SEM model–depending on the practitioner's goals–that accounts for repeated sampling or pseudoreplication. While the SEM scoring functions were highly related to the conventional scoring approach, SEM outperformed the conventional methods in terms of its wider distribution of scores–and thus enhanced discriminatory power on the lower and higher range of scores. We also confirmed that the SEM scoring function that includes adjustments for mineralogy and legacy of intensive land use successfully differentiates among contemporary management practices and land use. Therefore, we have confidence that the tool is reliable and appropriate to further examine more nuanced impacts of land use change and management practices within a given land use across time and space covering a diversity of soils. (300 words).

Examining the competing effects of contemporary land management vs. land cover changes on global air quality

Abstract. Our work explores the impact of two important dimensions of land system changes, land use and land cover change (LULCC) as well as direct agricultural reactive nitrogen (Nr) emissions from soils, on ozone (O3) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in terms of air quality over contemporary (1992 to 2014) timescales. We account for LULCC and agricultural Nr emissions changes with consistent remote sensing products and new global emission inventories respectively estimating their impacts on global surface O3 and PM2.5 concentrations as well as Nr deposition using the GEOS-Chem global chemical transport model. Over this time period, our model results show that agricultural Nr emission changes cause a reduction of annual mean PM2.5 levels over Europe and northern Asia (up to −2.1 µg m−3) while increasing PM2.5 levels in India, China and the eastern US (up to +3.5 µg m−3). Land cover changes induce small reductions in PM2.5 (up to −0.7 µg m−3) over Amazonia, China and India due to reduced biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emissions and enhanced deposition of aerosol precursor gases (e.g., NO2, SO2). Agricultural Nr emission changes only lead to minor changes (up to ±0.6 ppbv) in annual mean surface O3 levels, mainly over China, India and Myanmar. Meanwhile, our model result suggests a stronger impact of LULCC on surface O3 over the time period across South America; the combination of changes in dry deposition and isoprene emissions results in −0.8 to +1.2 ppbv surface ozone changes. The enhancement of dry deposition reduces the surface ozone level (up to −1 ppbv) over southern China, the eastern US and central Africa. The enhancement of soil NO emission due to crop expansion also contributes to surface ozone changes (up to +0.6 ppbv) over sub-Saharan Africa. In certain regions, the combined effects of LULCC and agricultural Nr emission changes on O3 and PM2.5 air quality can be comparable (>20 %) to anthropogenic emission changes over the same time period. Finally, we calculate that the increase in global agricultural Nr emissions leads to a net increase in global land area (+3.67×106km2) that potentially faces exceedance of the critical Nr load (>5 kg N ha−1 yr−1). Our result demonstrates the impacts of contemporary LULCC and agricultural Nr emission changes on PM2.5 and O3 in terms of air quality, as well as the importance of land system changes for air quality over multidecadal timescales.

Reflections on Sustainability Concepts: Aloha ʻĀina and the Circular Economy

The Circular Economy is gaining traction in the European Union and all over the world as a transition away from the extractive and exploitative linear economy. In Hawaiʻi, the cultural value of aloha ʻāina is a philosophy describing a set of values grounded in a relationship of kinship between people and the environment. Aloha ʻĀina structured centuries of sustainability and it has evolved over generations to frame community responses to crucial issues today, such as climate change, oligopolistic markets, and contemporary land management. This paper sits at the intersection of cross-disciplinary collaboration, sustainability, and sustainable development. Participative moderate observations and intentional cross-cultural exchanges of knowledge over five years between scholars and experts in the major fields of indigenous Hawaiian knowledge and industrial ecology inspired the concepts explored in this paper, which address the question of how aloha ʻāina and the Circular Economy can engage with each other in the collective effort to combat climate change, guide sustainable development efforts, and transition societies toward sustainability. Extensive literature reviews and insight gained through site visits to sustainability projects inform the discussion of best practices from opposite parts of the globe—Hawaiʻi and Germany—to put into conversation two worldviews and present resulting implications and lessons learned. Essential findings describe the benefits of knowledge exchange between members of global practitioner networks. By shifting expert and participant roles according to which projects are being observed, cross-cultural characteristics can be explored at a deeper level, which allow participants to employ best practices to their respective theories. The Circular Economy’s engagement with indigenous knowledge systems is an opportunity to ally and produce solutions to the challenges associated with changing the linear economy while addressing both environmental and social justice issues.

‘Clean Him Up…Make Him Look Like He Was Before’: Australian Aboriginal Management of Wetlands with Implications for Conservation, Restoration and Multiple Evidence Base Negotiations

Historical and contemporary Indigenous wetland management influences wetland ecological character and conservation in ways not well recognised by western science and mainstream natural resource management. For example, the Australian government funds Aboriginal-led management of traditional lands, but Aboriginal knowledge is rarely enabled to critique, enrich or provide alternatives to conventional wetland management theory and practice. Emerging processes like the Multiple Evidence Base approach aim to foster synergies across different knowledge systems to enrich understanding of, and solutions for, environmental challenges. A starting point for such negotiations is the mobilisation of each knowledge base to foster mutual comprehension of shared knowledge around a subject. To assist in mobilising Aboriginal knowledge around wetland ecosystem management, we offer a case study of related Aboriginal beliefs, knowledge and practice. Based on oral histories and ongoing expressions, wetland management practices undertaken by two Kimberley Aboriginal groups in northern Western Australia form this article’s focus. We describe how and why these groups manage or rehabilitate wetlands, reflecting on ecosystem generation and conservation, and convergences or divergences with western science. We also identify barriers to the mobilisation of Aboriginal knowledge systems within contemporary land management programs, and opportunities to better foster Multiple Evidence Base negotiations.

Synthesizing the dilemmas and prospects for a peri-urban land use management framework: Evidence from Ethiopia

The discourse on peri-urban land management frameworks cuts across different scientific domains and different tiers of government. The complexities of constructing effective framework lead to increasing land use conflicts, a consistent high rate of informal settlement patterns, frequent occurrence of illegal land acquisition, inequality in land access, and social unrest in most parts of peri-urban areas. These problems call an effective peri-urban land use management framework. Hence, the main objective of this paper is to conceptualize and synthesize the existing land management frameworks with the view to support the design of a new effective peri-urban land management alternative/framework. The study predominantly relies on a concept-centric literature review followed by a contextualization within the current Ethiopian land management systems. The scientific and grey literature reviewed have been selected based on their connection to the conceptual, methodological and operational discussions on land use intervention and spatial management in peri-urban areas. In addition, government-based land policies, frameworks, and directives are also included in the critical review, and are interpreted qualitatively in a content-wise based on the contemporary land management concepts and paradigms. The preliminary synthesis result of this paper was presented in the Ethiopian national annual land conference in 2019 and inputs were obtained from different stakeholders such as government officials, experts, researchers, and non-state actors. The review signals that the existing peri-urban land management frameworks consisting of the institutional arrangements related to land use intervention and the associated land information infrastructures are missed up, incoherent and far from being integrated. The legal frameworks, data standards, and structures between urban and rural land sectors are also different. These missed up urban and rural dichotomies, the isolated urban and rural land use policies and the different tiers of urban and rural land administration institutions result in a situation where managing peri-urban land use is ineffective. The result signals both a methodological and a technical gap in peri-urban land management in Ethiopia which hampers the effectiveness of decision-makers and practitioners. These limitations call for an urgent need towards an effective peri-urban land management framework/alternative through the alignment of land management indicators and requirements both horizontally and vertically. This could help to realize effective and evidence-based land management practices.

Cold War spy satellite images reveal long-term declines of a philopatric keystone species in response to cropland expansion.

Agricultural expansion drives biodiversity loss globally, but impact assessments are biased towards recent time periods. This can lead to a gross underestimation of species declines in response to habitat loss, especially when species declines are gradual and occur over long time periods. Using Cold War spy satellite images (Corona), we show that a grassland keystone species, the bobak marmot (Marmota bobak), continues to respond to agricultural expansion that happened more than 50 years ago. Although burrow densities of the bobak marmot today are highest in croplands, densities declined most strongly in areas that were persistently used as croplands since the 1960s. This response to historical agricultural conversion spans roughly eight marmot generations and suggests the longest recorded response of a mammal species to agricultural expansion. We also found evidence for remarkable philopatry: nearly half of all burrows retained their exact location since the 1960s, and this was most pronounced in grasslands. Our results stress the need for farsighted decisions, because contemporary land management will affect biodiversity decades into the future. Finally, our work pioneers the use of Corona historical Cold War spy satellite imagery for ecology. This vastly underused global remote sensing resource provides a unique opportunity to expand the time horizon of broad-scale ecological studies.

Hunter-gatherer land management in the human break from ecological sustainability

Evidence that human societies built on agricultural subsistence have been inherently ecologically unsustainable highlights the value in exploring whether any pre-agricultural subsistence approaches were ecologically sustainable or nearly so. The land management practices of some hunter-gatherer societies have been portrayed as sustainable, even beneficial. Research suggests such practices may fruitfully inform contemporary land management. As a human subsistence foundation, however, they may not have been ecologically sustainable. Figuring centrally in the late Pleistocene shift from immediate-return to delayed-return hunting and gathering, they enabled population growth, helped make possible the development of agriculture, and appear to have caused early environmental degradation. Consistent with this argument is research locating the origins of the Anthropocene near the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary, as societies were taking greater control of food production. It appears then that immediate-return hunting and gathering, which involved little or no land management, was the human lifeway most closely approaching ecological sustainability. Wider recognition of this idea would assist in understanding and addressing today’s ecological challenges.

The divergence of traditional Aboriginal and contemporary fire management practices on Wik traditional lands, Cape York Peninsula, Northern Australia

SummaryFire has been a critical component of Aboriginal culture and natural resource management in Australia for millennia. Aboriginal fire management in Northern Australia is widespread and, in some more remote areas, has continued relatively undisrupted despite widespread changes in tenure and land use. For the Wik people of Western Cape York, there has been a continued connection to their culture and traditional lands. Recently, Wik traditional owners have formed a ranger program which has secured funding to manage contemporary land management issues. This includes the landscape‐scale management of fire for biodiversity conservation and greenhouse gas abatement. Because the work is being conducted by Aboriginal people, with consent from traditional owners and on their traditional lands, there is an assumption that the activities are compatible with historical traditional land management and cultural practices. In this study, we use participatory action research to compare contemporary fire management with the current understanding of traditional Aboriginal fire management to assess objectively the compatibility of these two paradigms. We do this by combining the experience and understanding of traditional owners with anthropological and ecological perspectives. We find that contemporary fire management is applied across traditional cultural boundaries using methods such as aerial incendiaries. Financial incentives and contractual obligations associated with fire management are externally driven or include modern considerations such as the protection of infrastructure. In contrast, traditional fire management was the prerogative of traditional owners and was applied at fine scales for specific outcomes. Fire management was governed by rules that determined how people moved across the landscape and how resources were partitioned and shared. Supporting the implementation of Aboriginal burning alongside current fire management practices could lead to significant community engagement in such activities and is likely to have much better biodiversity and social outcomes.

Representations of the dingo: contextualising iconicity

Iconic species can present particular political and management imperatives and often shape national identities, and are shaped by them. More importantly, in the case of K'gari-Fraser Island and the dingo, shape the perceptions of iconicity in that landscape. Iconic species are used to represent diverse human valuing such as commercial, recreational, national, conservation and cultural. The dingo is contested as an introduced species in social evolution, is identified as a pest animal in contemporary land management, raises ancient human fears of predation and is, at the same time, the iconic representative of a World Heritage Listed landscape, due partly to the alleged genetic purity of K'gari-Fraser Island dingoes. Iconic species are viewed differently depending on epistemological biases and disciplinary frameworks, but these multiple constructions are rarely acknowledged or articulated. This paper searches for commonalities in constructions of the dingo across three literatures: scientific, anthropological/cultural analyses and tourism geographies. We find that each of these disciplinary literatures is divided. Within this contestation the dingo remains a liminal being in human perception defined by a predominantly anthropocentric vision. But there are two participants in any gaze, and future research might seek to understand how the dingo looks back at humans.

The interplay of knowledge, attitude and practice of livestock farmers' land management against desertification in the South African Kalahari

Desertification is a major environmental problem in South Africa with serious socio-economic consequences. Despite enormous efforts made to understand its causes and best management to combat desertification, little is known about the relation between land users' perspectives on land management and their actual practice. This study used the types of land tenure and livestock production scale to develop a farmer typology to explore the relation between livestock farmers' knowledge about, attitude towards and practices of three land management actions in Mier and Molopo-Taung, South Africa. Semi-structured interviews and photo elicitations were used to capture their knowledge, attitude and practice status of rotational grazing, woody plant control with herbicide, and revegetation. We found that high level of knowledge and positive attitude alone did not always result in actual practice of a management action on a full-scale. Situational factors such as financial resources, farm infrastructure, farm size, and land tenure challenged or constrained farmers' land management practices. Socio-economic disparities created by past institutional factors still affect contemporary land management. A farmer's land tenure and livestock production scale elucidate the situational factors that are likely to be constraints and challenges to his/her land management practices.

Anticipating land surface change

The interplay of human actions and natural processes over varied spatial and temporal scales can result in abrupt transitions between contrasting land surface states. Understanding these transitions is a key goal of sustainability science because they can represent abrupt losses of natural capital. This paper recognizes flickering between alternate land surface states in advance of threshold change and critical slowing down in advance of both threshold changes and noncritical transformation. The early warning signals we observe are rises in autocorrelation, variance, and skewness within millimeter-resolution thickness measurements of tephra layers deposited in A.D. 2010 and A.D. 2011. These signals reflect changing patterns of surface vegetation, which are known to provide early warning signals of critical transformations. They were observed toward migrating soil erosion fronts, cryoturbation limits, and expanding deflation zones, thus providing potential early warning signals of land surface change. The record of the spatial patterning of vegetation contained in contemporary tephra layers shows how proximity to land surface change could be assessed in the widespread regions affected by shallow layers of volcanic fallout (those that can be subsumed within the existing vegetation cover). This insight shows how we could use tephra layers in the stratigraphic record to identify "near misses," close encounters with thresholds that did not lead to tipping points, and thus provide additional tools for archaeology, sustainability science, and contemporary land management.

Field Expertise in Rural Land Management

This paper explores the expertise of field-level advisors in rural land management. The context is the English uplands and negotiation over a Higher Level Stewardship agreement. An observed encounter between a hill farmer, his retained land agent, and an ecologist working for Natural England illustrates the multiple roles that field-level advisors have in regulating, directing, and influencing contemporary land management. The paper draws on field notes taken during work shadowing and in-depth interviews, to reflect upon the relationships that constitute field expertise—not only between farmer and advisor, but amongst the advisors too (and those who advise them). We argue that expert—expert interaction and the emergence of networks of practice are crucial to the development of field expertise and are key factors in the increasing complexity of the decision making underpinning contemporary land management.

Conceptual Models of 1200 Years of Icelandic Soil Erosion Reconstructed Using Tephrochronology

With reference to 18 tephra isochrones, we present six reconstructions of landscapes in South Iceland at precise times through the last 1200 years and develop three related models of soil erosion. Before the late ninth century A.D., the landscapes of Iceland were without people and resilient to natural processes. The initial impact of human settlement in the ninth century AD was most profound in ecologically marginal areas, where major anthropogenic modifications of the ecology drove geomorphological change. In the uplands, overgrazing contributed to the formation of a dense patchwork of breaks in the vegetation cover where soil erosion developed and resulted in the rapid denudation of large areas. As the upland soils were shallow (generally <0.5 m), the overall impact of erosion on total aeolian sediment fluxes before AD 1510 was modest. Later erosion of the deeper lowland soils (generally >2 m) involved a lower spatial density of eroding fronts and a slower loss of soil cover, but a much greater movement of sediment. Land-management strategies, changes in species patterns of plant communities, extreme weather events, and climate changes have combined in differing degrees to initiate and drive rates of soil erosion. Sensitivity to change and the crossing of erosion thresholds has varied through time. The record of soil erosion has major implications for both archaeology and contemporary land management.

Effects of large fires on biodiversity in south-eastern Australia: disaster or template for diversity?

Large fires coincident with drought occurred in south-eastern Australia during 2001–2007. Perceptions of large, intense fires as being ecologically ‘disastrous’ are common. These are summarised by four hypotheses characterising large fires as: (i) homogenous in extent and intensity; (ii) causing large-scale extinction due to perceived lack of survival and regeneration capacity among biota; (iii) degrading due to erosion and related edaphic effects; (iv) unnatural, as a consequence of contemporary land management. These hypotheses are examined using available evidence and shown to inadequately account for effects of large fires on biodiversity. Large fires do not burn homogeneously, though they may produce intensely burnt patches and areas. The bulk of biota are resilient through a variety of in situ persistence mechanisms that are reinforced by landscape factors. Severe erosive episodes following fire tend to be local and uncertain rather than global and inevitable. Redistribution of soil and nutrients may reinforce habitat variation in some cases. Signals of fire are highly variable over prehistoric and historic eras, and, in some cases, contemporary and pre-European signal levels are equivalent. The most important effects of large fires in these diverse ecological communities and landscapes stem from their recurrence rate. Adaptive management of fire regimes rather than fire events is required, based on an understanding of risks posed by particular regimes to biota.

Impact of Aboriginal landscape burning on woody vegetation in Eucalyptus tetrodonta savanna in Arnhem Land, northern Australia

AbstractAim To compare woody vegetation of Eucalyptus tetrodonta savanna in an area that has had near continuous management by Aboriginal people with that of an area managed by neither Aborigines nor Europeans for the last 50 years. In particular, we tested the hypothesis that Aboriginal landscape burning increases the abundance of tree species, particularly those that bear edible fruit. We also examined whether Aboriginal burning increases tree density of the mid‐layer using measurements of the density and size distribution of all trees.Location Central Arnhem Land, a stronghold of traditional Aboriginal culture, in the Australian monsoon tropics.Methods Previous remote sensing analyses have shown that over the decade prior to field sampling, fires in the unmanaged area had produced a coarse‐scale mosaic of patches burnt between one to three times, in contrast the area under Aboriginal management was characterized by very high spatial and temporal variability of fire activity. In the study reported here, we assessed density, size distribution and taxonomic identity of trees in 78 and 79 plots (each 79–1385 m2 in area) in the managed and unmanaged areas, respectively. Habitat attributes such as cover of rocks and bare ground and cover of various life forms were visually assessed for each plot, and density of grass and leaf litter was measured.Results Despite the contrasting fire regimes there were only minor differences in the fine fuels between the two areas, both of which had a low biomass of grass (dry weight was 35–221 g m−2). The composition and overall density of woody species was similar in the two areas but densities of fruit tree species and eucalypts were significantly higher, particularly in middle of the size class distribution of stems, in the unmanaged area while a few species, such as the fire sensitive conifer Callitris intratropica, were more abundant in the managed area.Main conclusions Our findings suggest that current Aboriginal landscape burning has a significant impact on vegetation structure, specifically stems in the middle of the size class distribution, but little effect on either species composition or total tree density. Such burning reduced the abundance of fruit bearing trees but had little effect on grass or fine fuel biomass. The vegetation structure in the area managed by Aborigines was similar to that reported for many savannas subjected to European fire regimes; a core difference, however, was lower biomass of tall grasses and greater abundance of C. intratropica. These data provide important empirical corroboration of previous descriptive ethnographic and historical analyses that vegetation structure at the time of settlement was strongly influenced by indigenous peoples’ use of fire. Thus our results not only inform contemporary land management but also provide insights into the role humans played in the evolution of Australia's remarkably flammable flora. Given our inability to use a replicated experimental design the generality of these conclusions require testing by comparing the findings of allied studies conducted elsewhere in northern Australia.

Land Management in the Sokoto Caliphate: Lessons for Contemporary Nigeria

This paper contributes to the quest for a suitable land management model for Nigeria through an examination of the contributions of . the Sokoto triumvirate Uthman Dandodio, Abdullahi Danfodio and Muhammad Bello (the most prominent of the leaders of the caliphate) to land management by reviewing their works and the writings, of contemporary scholars on the issue to ‘provide a synthetic exposition of the caliphate’s land management system. It discusses the caliphate’s land tenure and land development system, preservation and reservation of land resources, management of water resources, pastures and farming as well as urban land planning and administration. The paper also evaluates the caliphate’s land management policies in terms of their relevance and implications for contemporary land management.

Native American impacts on fire regimes of the California coastal ranges

AimNative American burning impacts on California shrubland dominated landscapes are evaluated relative to the natural lightning fire potential for affecting landscape patterns.LocationFocus was on the coastal ranges of central and southern California.MethodsPotential patterns of Indian burning were evaluated based upon historical documents, ethnographic accounts, archaeological records and consideration of contemporary land management tactics. Patterns of vegetation distribution in this region were evaluated relative to environmental factors and the resilience of the dominant shrub vegetation to different fire frequencies.ResultsLightning fire frequency in this region is one of the lowest in North America and the density of pre‐Columbian populations was one of the highest. Shrublands dominate the landscape throughout most of the region. These woody communities have weak resilience to high fire frequency and are readily displaced by annual grasses and forbs under high fire frequency. Intact shrublands provided limited resources for native Americans and thus there was ample motivation for using fire to degrade this vegetation to an open mosaic of shrubland/grassland, not unlike the agropastoral modification of ecologically related shrublands by Holocene peoples in the Mediterranean Basin. Alien‐dominated grasslands currently cover approximately one‐quarter of the landscape and less than 1% of these grasslands have a significant native grass presence. Ecological studies in the Californian coastal ranges have failed to uncover any clear soil or climate factors explaining grassland and shrubland distribution patterns.Main conclusionsCoastal ranges of California were regions of high Indian density and low frequency of lightning fires. The natural vegetation dominants on this landscape are shrubland vegetation that often form dense impenetrable stands with limited resources for Native Americans. Natural fire frequencies are not high enough to maintain these landscapes in habitable mixtures of shrublands and grasslands but such landscape mosaics are readily produced with additional human subsidy of ignitions. It is hypothesized that a substantial fraction of the landscape was type converted from shrubland to grassland and much of the landscape that underwent such type conversion has either been maintained by Euro‐American land management practices or resisted recolonization of native shrublands. It appears that these patterns are disturbance dependent and result from anthropogenic alteration of landscapes initiated by Native Americans and sustained and expanded upon by Euro‐American settlers.

Aboriginal Labour and the Cattle Industry: Queensland from White Settlement to the Present

Introduction 1. Aboriginal land use at the time of contact 2. The arrival of white people 3. The entry of Aboriginal workers into the cattle industry 4. 1897 and its aftermath 5. Opponents of the Act 6. Continuity and change 7. The 1919 Employment Regulation 8. Increasing government involvement 9. Missions 10. World War II and beyond 11. Equal pay 12. Contemporary land management Conclusion Bibliography.

Aboriginal Resource Utilization and Fire Management Practice in Western Arnhem Land, Monsoonal Northern Australia: Notes for Prehistory, Lessons for the Future

This paper considers traditional resources and fire management practices of Aboriginal people living in a near-coastal region of western Arnhem Land, monsoonal northern Australia. The data illustrate that before the arrival of Europeans freshwater floodplains and riverine habitats provided the major proportion of food resources over much of the seasonal cycle. By contrast, the extensive lowland woodlands and open forests, the sparser vegetation of the Arnhem Land escarpment and plateau, and the generally small patches of rain forest (“jungle”), provided relatively few resources, although jungle yams were of critical importance through the relatively lean wet season. The paper then considers burning as a management tool through the seasonal cycle. In broad terms, burning commenced in the early dry season and was applied systematically and purposefully over the landscape. Burning in the late dry season was undertaken with care, and resumed in earnest with the onset of the first storms of the new wet season, particularly on floodplains. These general patterns of resource use and fire management are shown to have applied widely over much of near-coastal northern Australia. The implications of these data for prehistory and for contemporary land management practices in the region, are considered. It is suggested that pre-European patterns of fire management in the region are likely to have been practiced only over the past few thousand years, given the development of abundant food resources in the late Holocene. It is shown that traditional burning practice offers a generally useful, conservative model for living in and managing a highly fire-prone savanna environment.