Fire & People

Fire and people have complex relationships that vary within and across human communities and that change through time and space. Fire affects human biology, psychology, demography, technology, economy, and politics. People influence fire ecology too: people increase or decrease fire frequency, and disrupt or maintain fire regimes when population levels or settlement patterns change, when technology evolves, and when the political economy shifts. The distribution of fire sensitive trees in relation to prehistoric Native American settlements (Foster, Black, and Abrams 2004) and the variety of successional stages in contemporary Southern forests are material evidence that interactions between people and fire have dynamic effects. When society changes, the environment changes, and fire ecology does also.

In this section of ESFS, you will find up-to-date knowledge about many dimensions of the people-fire relationship. Some aspects of fire-people relationships are more studied than others. More research has been done on fire history and the health effects of fire, for instance, than on cultural perceptions of fire and fire effects on recreation. Several fields of study are emerging because they are especially important in contemporary American society. Fire in the wildland urban interface and the economic consequences of fire, for example, are increasingly active areas of research.

The Fire and People section reviews the human ecology of fire in the South; in other words the ways Southerners think about and interact with fire. It contains syntheses of 10 key topics:

• Human Health Impacts of Fire: There are numerous biological and psychological human health impacts of fire, but the effects vary greatly depending on whether it is a wildfire or prescribed fire.

• Economic Impacts of Fire: Forest fires have economic implications for private, state, and federal landowners as well as for consumers of forest products. The economic outcomes of forest fires are influenced by the dynamic cultural, political, and ecological contexts within which they burn.

• Fire in the Wildland Urban Interface: Wildland urban interface zones (WUI) are places where potentially flammable vegetative fuels meet or intermix with combustible man-made structures. 95% of fires in the Southeast potentially involve the WUI. Fire in the WUI is of unique concern because of special issues that differentiate it from other wildland fires, which, in turn, create a critical need to mitigate fire hazards in the WUI zone. WUI zones in the South continue to expand as the population in the South increases and development encroaches into natural areas. High rainfall and long growing seasons favor rapid vegetation growth. These factors, coupled with the relatively short natural burn cycles in many Southern ecosystems, make the South’s WUI situation distinctly unique, with potentially high fire hazard.

• Fire Management Policies: Policies governing fire management are very complex because of the variety of interests, perspectives, and goals of the interested organizations. Numerous agencies and private parties manage prescribed burn programs and participate in wildland fire operations.

• Fire Education Programs in the South: Fire is an important issue to the public, and public understanding is key to natural resource managers’ ability to effectively manage fire. Understanding the role of fire will help landowners and land users appreciate and support the efforts of federal, state, local, and tribal fire management organizations.

• A History of People and Fire in the South: Fire history is closely linked to human history in the South. The history of human-fire relationships in the South is 12,500 years long. Understanding the history of fire and people in the South can help scientists and managers interpret today’s landscapes and design the best fire management plans.

• Effects of Fire on Cultural Resources: A fires impact on cultural resources -- the material and non-material representations of contemporary, historic, and prehistoric lifeways -- may be direct or indirect.

• Knowledge and Attitudes about Fire: There are a wide range of knowledge and attitudes about fire among Southerners and these influence not only human behavior, but also the ecology of fire.

• The Aesthetics of Fire: Since aesthetics, or the quality of the environment as measured by the human senses, is among the primary forest attributes that the public values, managers must consider the visual quality of the landscape in the development of land management plans.

• Recreation and Fire: Southerners often interact with Nature through recreational activities such as fishing, hunting, picnicing, camping, bicycling, hiking, and history tourism. Prescribed fire is used to manage recreation sites. Wildfires sometimes impacts recreation and recreational sites, but managers can rehabilitate those sites to restore recreational opportunities.