The course presents a diachronic perspective on human-fire interactions with local ecosystems in California that spans over 10,000 years. The course will provide an historical perspective on human-fire interactions at the landscape scale using a diverse range of data sources drawn from the fields of fire ecology, biology, history, anthropology, and archaeology. An important component includes examining how diverse cultures and ethnicity influenced how people perceived and used fire at the landscape scale in ancient, historical and modern times. The implications of these diverse fire practices and policies will be analyzed and the consequences they have had for transforming habitats and propagating catastrophic fires will be explored.

The purpose of this class is to explore the interactions of fire with the people and ecosystems of California over the last 10,000 years. Most Californians today fear wildland fires that each year scorch millions of acres of land, cost hundreds of millions of dollars to fight, destroy human lives and property, and blacken aesthetically pleasing landscapes. The course will provide a historical perspective on human-fire interactions at the landscape scale using a diverse range of data sources drawn from the fields of fire ecology, biology, forestry, history, anthropology, and archaeology. The goal is to examine how diverse populations in California have related to wildland fires, and how some groups employed fire to shape and alter local ecosystems. We will begin with the earliest evidence of human-wildfire interactions that date back to the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. We will then explore how fire was used by Native Californians in Late Holocene and Historic times to create rich mosaics of habitats across local regions. High biodiversity, in turn, provided local communities with a cornucopia of foods, medicines, and raw materials for clothing, baskets, houses, dance regalia, and other cultural objects. We will then examine how Spanish, Mexican, Russian, and early American colonists in California interacted with fire and how it was employed to facilitate grazing lands for thousands of head of livestock and in early forest management and conservation. A significant portion of the course will focus on the historical development of fire suppression policies enacted by the federal and state governments over the last century. The implications of these fire suppression policies will be analyzed and the consequences they have for propagating catastrophic fires today will be explored. We will also consider recent changes in the practices of government agencies that are moving away from fire suppression policies to that of the strategic use of prescribed burning and managed wildfire to control fuel loads and increase the biodiversity and sustainability of wildlands.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills