Leverhulme Wildfires Centre Leverhulme Wildfires Centre

There is growing interest in understanding how small-scale farmers in different parts of the world organise their agricultural and land-burning activities. This is particularly so in the case of land managers seeking to change how and when farmers burn in order to bring such activities more into line with wider conservation or REDD-related objectives. However, there is little understanding of the technical, social and cultural feasibility and impacts of changing farmer behaviour with regard to fire.

This PhD project will help to address this knowledge gap. It is based on empirical research in the Niassa Reserve, northern Mozambique. Covering approximately ten million hectares, the Reserve is the country’s largest protected area and home to large populations of farmers practicing shifting agriculture. Using a case study approach, research assesses how fire management practices have developed in the area, what the alternatives to such practices might be, and what the socioeconomic and cultural implications are in encouraging such alternatives. A mixture of data collection methods are employed, including interviews, questionnaires and remote sensing.  

Project duration: 2020-2024

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Recent studies show that Indigenous peoples manage or have tenure rights over a quarter of the world’s land surface, which intersects with over 40% of all terrestrial protected areas and ecologically intact landscapes. Understanding Indigenous land management practices, such as fire, therefore, are becoming increasing important in a context of changing climate, loss of traditional knowledge, and calls for extending protected areas across the globe.

This PhD project investigates changing fire management practices of the Indigenous people living in and around the Kanuku Mountains Protected Area in southern Guyana. In particular, it looks at the changes in social-ecological relations and land management practices, including administrative and land policies and climate trends within a historical context.   It focusses on the fire calendar; the different months and seasons of fire, and how these relate to current cultural practices with implications for land management (including fire) across a myriad of land tenure systems and ecosystems in savanna/forest dynamic. The project involves a mixture of data collection techniques including archival research, remote sensing, participatory methods, ethnographic field methods and interviews.

Project duration: 2019-2023

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Wildfires and other forms of landscape burning are complex, dynamic and in some ways difficult to predict and certainly potentially dangerous phenomena. Fires up to even extreme mega-fire events can be studied using the techniques of remote sensing and modelling, but these studies and those of smaller burns often need to be informed by and sometimes combined with data from in situ investigations, for example on the spectral properties of the fires if using remote sensing and on the different composition of their smoke and what controls that if estimating emissions. This in situ data can be collected in the field on planned burns or even on wildfires were possible, and can also be supplemented – where appropriate – by data collected in laboratory fires under more controlled conditions. The purpose of this technical postdoctoral project is to deliver the capability to make and analyse these measurements to support specific aspects of the Centre’s work on fire spectral signatures and smoke emissions, as well as wider investigations.

Project duration: 2019- ongoing

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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

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