Fire is a critical component of many agricultural and livestock-based land-use systems in the Global South where its management benefits from generations of local experience in how, when and where to set fires for maximum local benefit. In many countries, governments and conservation organisations have implemented a range of fire-related policies (from promoting ‘early burning’ to banning all burning, or undertaking controlled burning) to address concerns about impacts on nearby populations (from smoke or property damage caused by out-of-control fires), biodiversity and levels of carbon emissions. Both traditional ecological knowledge and science-based knowledge (which may have underpinned government policies) are being challenged by a changing climate and growing pressure on land to meet both conservation and development aspirations. There is therefore an urgent need not only to understand the knowledge base and value systems underpinning different fire management practices in specific contexts but also to explore the potential trade-offs between these changing fire management practices.

This project investigates changing local fire management practices in India. It looks at who takes fire management decisions (including both local communities and government departments) and on what basis, how fires are considered to benefit different groups and whether there are trade-offs with costs borne by other groups.

 

An awareness poster on penal provisions for starting forest fires in Uttarakhand

An awareness poster on penal provisions for starting forest fires in Uttarakhand

 

Project Duration – 2020- 2024

Leadership Team

Wildfires and other forms of landscape burning turn solid material held in vegetation and organic soil into a complex mix of airborne gases and particulates. When conducted over large areas and/or in extreme fires, this rapid process can result in massive atmospheric impacts, perhaps most particularly on air quality (AQ). Landscape fires of this sort are thus responsible for severe AQ episodes, including some of the world’s worst events that likely impact the health of millions. Furthermore, in many regions of the developing world recurrent burning of agricultural waste over huge areas of croplands leads to air pollution episodes that routinely affect the air that hundreds of millions of people breath, including in some of the largest mega-cities on Earth. However, it can be hard to disentangle the contribution landscape fires make to the poor air quality of these areas because many of the areas affected suffer from a paucity of in situ atmospheric measurements for example. Regional AQ modelling can deploy state-of-the-art information on different emissions sources, including landscape fires and agricultural burning, to address these and other related questions, ultimately informing studies of human health and also potentially agricultural policy development related to changing patterns and timing of cropping. Other uses of such modelling include the study of the radiative effects of the short-lived climate impactors (SLCPs) and to support the evaluation and validation of new fire emissions estimates coming from Earth Observation – which are extremely difficult to validate directly or through other means but which when placed within a regional AQ model can provide metrics such as aerosol optical depth timeseries that can be compared to high accuracy in situ data.

Project duration: 2021-2025

Leadership Team

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