First view of a world wi...( erty and livelihoods and affect local a...)

erty and livelihoods and affect local air quality, but perhaps more importantly, fires destroy above-ground vegetation on a huge scale burning the critical carbon sinks which form such a fundamental part of the world's attempts, through the Kyoto protocol, to slow the rate of carbon dioxide increase in atmosphere. Human influences on fire are near universal. We suppress fires in some regions and ignite them in others. However the fire-maintained ecosystems identified in our research have been burning for millions of years and include some of the most biodiverse regions of the world. We need to balance the necessity of using fire in these ecosystems with protecting forests from indiscriminate burning. This issue requires urgent and focused attention from the ecological and geochemical communities if we are to manage the effects of global change on our planet."

Fire changes vegetation quickly, directly and fundamentally it is now clear from this research that a fundamental understanding of landscape fires is necessary for comprehending the way much of the world works and for projecting the effects of changing human land use and climate on vegetation. Thus, understanding direct climate effects on our biosphere is far from enough for projecting intensifying global change impacts into the future.

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Contact: William Bond
bond@botzoo.uct.ac.za
27-021- 650-2439
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
25-Jan-2005

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