Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Indigenous Impacts On North American Great Plains Fire Regimes Of The Past Millennium, Christopher I. Roos, Maria Nieves Zedeño, Kacy L. Hollenback, Mary M. H. Erlick

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Fire use has played an important role in human evolution and subsequent dispersals across the globe, yet the relative importance of human activity and climate on fire regimes is controversial. This is particularly true for historical fire regimes of the Americas, where indigenous groups used fire for myriad reasons but paleofire records indicate strong climate–fire relationships. In North American grasslands, decadal-scale wet periods facilitated widespread fire activity because of the abundance of fuel promoted by pluvial episodes. In these settings, human impacts on fire regimes are assumed to be independent of climate, thereby diminishing the strength of climate–fire relationships. We …