Shrub cover declined as Indigenous populations expanded across southeast Australia

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By Michela Mariani et al, Science. 

Summary: Anthropogenic climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of wildfires in many regions of the world, with devastating consequences. Mariani et al. suggest that another human activity, colonization, has contributed to increasing high-intensity fires in Australia. The authors used multiple paleoecological proxy datasets to compare vegetation structure between time periods reaching back to the last interglacial (over 100,000 years ago). Shrub cover, which fuels fires and spreads them into the forest canopy, was lower during the Middle to Late Holocene, when indigenous Australians were managing the landscape with burning, than it was during other time periods. Shrub cover has increased substantially since British colonization and the forced removal of indigenous burning practices that came with it. Restoring cultural burning may thus help to prevent megafires. —Bianca Lopez. 

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