School of Geography - Theses
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ItemCultural landscapes: a test case from northwest Tasmania( 2020)The influence of Indigenous management on the Australian landscape is subject to ongoing scholarly debate and is often mischaracterised within mainstream discourse as a passive rather than active practise (Bowman, 1998; Gammage, 2011; Pascoe, 2014; Fletcher, Hall and Alexandra, 2020). These debates inform current socio-ecological models in which human agency is largely omitted (Bowman et al. 1981; Jackson 1968; Wood et al. 2012). This project seeks to test the notion that the western Tasmanian landscape was constructed by Aboriginal people and that contemporary rainforest in this region invaded open fire-maintained vegetation following the British Invasion. In order to provide a direct empirical test to the veracity of claims made by early British surveyors this project employs a dendrochronology and aerial imagery analysis to reconstruct forest history pre and post-British Invasion in the Surrey Hills of northwest Tasmania, Australia. This work aims to investigate the landscape history of a part of northwest Tasmania in an attempt to highlight the social and ecological value of Indigenous fire management, and to provide empirical data to challenge contemporary narratives of passive occupation of the Australian landmass by Indigenous Australians. Findings from this research identified a clear relationship between the succession of Indigenous landscape management following the British invasion and exponential rainforest establishment. This research provides further evidence that demonstrates the impact Aboriginal people had on creating and maintaining the Tasmanian landscape which was invaded by the British, and provides an opportunity to reimagine current landscape management regimes and the role of humans within these systems.
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ItemUnderstanding the response of Tasmanian rainforest to climate change in the absence of human influence( 2019)The predicted increase of climate-driven wildfires poses a threat to the endemic rainforest species of Tasmania. In order to sustainably conserve and manage these threatened ecosystems in the future, it is crucial to understand the natural response of western Tasmanian vegetation to rapid climate change. While previous research at the Lake Selina site in the region has produced a paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the environmental response to climate shifts during a period in which historical indigenous land management practices were in effect, there is a knowledge gap regarding the response of vegetation to rapid climatic warming in the absence of these practices, which describes the situation in western Tasmania today. As such, this thesis seeks to understand the post-glacial response of vegetation to warming Holocene climates in the absence of anthropogenic fire regimes. To do so, a multi-proxy analysis of lake sediments from Darwin Crater in western Tasmania is conducted in order to facilitate comprehensive palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of a post-glacial environment. After establishing the suitability of conducting a comparison between the selected sites, this research goes on to determine the differences in the response of Tasmanian vegetation in the presence or absence of fire-based land management. The findings from this research identified a clear relationship between anthropogenic fire regimes and the response of western Tasmanian vegetation and can thus be used to project the future responses of vegetation in the region in the absence of indigenous land management practices.
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ItemFire politics on the frontier: a political ecology of swidden fire in Palawan's green economy( 2017)The role of fire in swidden agriculture is often overlooked in literature regarding rural livelihoods and agrarian change in Southeast Asia, despite being an integral component of swidden practice. This study aims to fill this gap by describing the varied economic and socio-cultural functions and values of swidden fire and its politically contested nature in forest governance in Palawan Island, the Philippines. Taking a political ecology approach, this study draws on a 'fire politics' framework with insights and methods informed by ethnoecology. In order to examine indigenous Pala'wan uses and perceptions of swidden fire, and the representation and politically contested nature of swidden fire in environmental governance, 23 key-informant interviews with Pala'wan farmers, non-government organisations and government representatives were conducted over three weeks in June 2017. The study found that swidden fire is intimately connected to swidden livelihoods, primarily by providing the most efficient and effective means to produce crops for subsistence. Farmers continue to burn, even as other swidden practices are adjusted in response to landscape change, influenced by green governance that spatially restricts land and pressures farmers to sedenterise agriculture. Other contextual features such as a history of criminalisation of swidden, disjunctures between top-level policies shaped by constructions of the 'kaingin (slash-and-burn) problem', and local policy implementation and understandings of kaingin and are examined. More material characteristics of fire are also considered in examining the persistence and conflicts over swidden and swidden fire. Overall, this study contributes to a growing body of literature on the political ecology of fire, and studies of swidden livelihoods and agrarian change. Such understandings are crucial in engaging broader views on the 'destructive' nature of swidden fire, inherent within global and sub-national interpretations of the 'green economy'.