[Aqualist] Ecological Society of Australia conference - abstracts due FRIDAY July 23

[Michael Fletcher]

Hi Everyone,

I hope you are all well (particularly those of us enduring lockdown and the pleasures of home-schooling).

I would like to draw your attention to this session in the Ecological Society of Australia annual conference in Darwin, taking place in November this year.

It might be a good chance for those of us working in the landscape/vegetation change areas to actually get together!!

The catch is that the abstracts are due THIS FRIDAY (July 23).

Abstracts can be submitted through here: https://kaigi.eventsair.com/PresentationPortal/esa21/esa-2021---call-for-abstracts/Presentation

Information about the conference can be found here: https://esa2021.org.au/

The session summary is as follows:

PF-FIRE: Past Fire Frequency and Intensity Reconstruction
Fire is a key ecological process in the Earth System, yet we have little appreciation of how fire has changed through time and how these changes are both driven by, and drive, changes in ecosystems and ecosystem dynamics. This is particularly the case in the Australia, where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have used fire (so-called cultural burning) to keep Country healthy for millennia, and where the disruption of cultural burning following the British invasion predates concerted ecological effort by more than a century. The British invasion heralded a new fire management paradigm in Australia that was underpinned by notions of fire suppression and elimination, an approach that still dominates today. It has been convincingly argued by Indigenous Australians and scientists alike that the increasing incidence of catastrophic bushfires in Australia over recent decades is the direct result of the removal of cultural burning following the British Invasion. This session invites people investigating how fire and landscapes have changed at timescales relevant for understanding both the influence of cultural burning on Country and the impacts of the removal of cultural burning. A number of advances in the fields of palaeo-ecology and dendro-ecology have recently allowed the determination of critical and previously invisible facets of fire regimes from archives of the past, such as fire intensity, fire frequency and fuel type. Further, new computational models have allowed the reconstruction of changes in landcover from subfossil plant remains. These new and critical insights provide a powerful data source on past fire activity that have direct and applied implications for living on and appropriately managing the Australian continent.

The aims of this session are threefold:
1. To provide Traditional Owners with empirical support for efforts to return cultural burning to Country;
2. To provide data and narratives that places the current State of Environment in Australia within an appropriate pre-British Invasion context;
3. To engage neo-ecologists with those working in dendo- and palaeo-ecology to improve our collective understanding of ecosystem processes and dynamics on this continent.

I hope to see as many of you as possible in November!

Cheers,
Michael.

Associate Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher
Associate Dean (Indigenous) | Faculty of Science
Director (Research Capability) | Indigenous Knowledge Institute
Associate Investigator | Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH)

School of Geography | The University of Melbourne
Room 2.09, Level 2, 221 Bouverie Street, Parkville VIC 3010
p. +61 3 90353048 | e. michael.fletcher at unimelb.edu.au<mailto:michael.fletcher at unimelb.edu.au> | tw. @theotheroad @Melb_Palaeo

[flag]  Wiradjuri

http://michaelsresearch.wordpress.com/ | http://geography.unimelb.edu.au/ | https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/display/person6089 | https://epicaustralia.org.au/