TY  - JOUR
AU  - Archibald, S.
AU  - Scholes, R.J.
AU  - Roy, David P.
AU  - Roberts, G.
AU  - Boschetti, L.
PY  - 2010//
TI  - Southern African fire regimes as revealed by remote sensing
JO  - International Journal of Wildland Fire
SP  - 861
EP  - 878
VL  - 19
IS  - 7
KW  - active fire
KW  - Africa
KW  - area
KW  - Australia
KW  - burned area
KW  - burnt area
KW  - fire
KW  - fire frequency
KW  - fire management
KW  - Fire Radiative Power
KW  - Fire Radiative Power (FRP)
KW  - fire regime
KW  - fire size
KW  - fire spread
KW  - human
KW  - human activity
KW  - human control
KW  - human land use
KW  - ignition
KW  - ignition frequency
KW  - journal articles
KW  - land
KW  - land use
KW  - land-use
KW  - management
KW  - patterns
KW  - population density
KW  - regional
KW  - regional pattern
KW  - remote sensing
KW  - rural
KW  - rural population
KW  - savanna
KW  - season
KW  - seasonality
KW  - southern Africa
KW  - spatial
KW  - spatial information
KW  - vegetation type
N2  - Here we integrate spatial information on annual burnt area, fire frequency, fire seasonality, fire radiative power and fire size distributions to produce an integrated picture of fire regimes in southern Africa. The regional patterns are related to gradients of environmental and human controls of fire, and compared with findings from other grass-fuelled fire systems on the globe. The fire regime differs across a gradient of human land use intensity, and can be explained by the differential effect of humans on ignition frequencies and fire spread. Contrary to findings in the savannas of Australia, there is no obvious increase in fire size or fire intensity from the early to the late fire season in southern Africa, presumably because patterns of fire ignition are very different. Similarly, the importance of very large fires in driving the total annual area burnt is not obvious in southern Africa. These results point to the substantial effect that human activities can have on fire in a system with high rural population densities and active fire management. Not all aspects of a fire regime are equally impacted by people: fire-return time and fire radiative power show less response to human activities than fire size and annual burned area.
SN  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/WF10008
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/WF10008
N1  - exported from refbase (http://eros.usgs.gov/refbase/show.php?record=24075), last updated on Fri, 21 Sep 2012 12:00:47 -0500
ID  - Archibald_etal2010
ER  -