Human Paleoecology

Forest fire burning in afromontane forest in 2022. Source: Powell et al. (2023). I n the previous two blog posts I discussed the history of ecological management techniques used by people in savannas and grasslands and in rainforests in Africa. In this blog post, I will be addressing the history of landscape management in one last ecosystem: the afromontane forest. Understanding the history of land management in all three environments can offer us a lens through which to imagine the future of policy and management of these ecosystems for a sustainable future.  Afromontane Forests  While the exact role of humans in forest retreat in the last few thousand years in the tropical rainforests in Central and West Africa may still be up for debate, there is sizable evidence for human modification of afromontane forests in East Africa and southern-central Africa. Areas with Afromontane forests in Africa. Area I: West African and Cameroon Highlands. Area II: Arabian and Ethiopian highla...

The Guineo-Congolian rainforest. Source: Huntly, Brian John. (2023). The Guineo-Congolian Rain Forest Biome. Ecology of Angola. In the previous blog post, I briefly touched upon discussions of deforestation in African forest, namely how they related to the history of savannas. It has been clearly established that savannas are ancient, existing for longer than the tropical forests near, and thus not the result of mass deforestation. However, the history of forests within Africa is much more complicated than that. History of Rainforests in Africa  During the last glacial maximum approximately 20,000 years ago, most of the rainforests in Central and West Africa that we see today did not exist, and were likely savannas or grasslands 1 . This means that the rainforests we see today in Africa didn’t start developing until roughly 12,000 years ago when the climate had warmed and central and West Africa had become humid enough to support a rainforest. At the peak of this period, the rainf...

Fires Burning in a savanna in Africa. Source: blendspace On an average day in August, 70% of the world’s fires will be burning in Africa. Maps that show the number of fires burning globally, like the one pictured below produced by NASA using satellite data, seem to show most of Sub-Saharan Africa on fire. Currently 2.56 Million square kilometers of land is burned in Africa each year 1 . This certainly would be concerning if these were forest fires akin to the type seen in the Amazon Rainforest. Luckily this is not the case because most of these fires are in savannas and grasslands.  Map developed by NASA FIRMS showing fire events in Africa on January 31, 2022. Each red dot represents a fire event registered by the satellite. The map clearly indicates the large number of fire events happening in Sub-Saharan Africa. Source:  NASA FIRMS   Fires in savannas and grasslands are of much lesser concern and are a natural part of ecosystem cycling. The most fire prone ecosystem ...