Legacies of Indigenous land use shaped past wildfire regimes in the Basin-Plateau Region, USA

Climatic conditions significantly influence wildfire activity in the western United States; however, Indigenous farming practices might have also shaped local fire regimes for millennia. This study integrates sedimentary archives, tree rings, and archaeological data from the Fish Lake Plateau (a unique region where maize farming was adopted and abandoned) to reconstruct the past 1200 years of fire, climate, and human activity. A period of high fire activity is identified during the peak of prehistoric farming (900-1400 CE), suggesting farming obscured climate's role through frequent low-severity burning. Climate again became the primary driver after farming abandonment around 1400 CE. The conclusion is that Indigenous populations shaped high-elevation fire regimes through land-use practices.

Vachel A. Carter, Andrea Brunelle, Mitchell J. Power, R. Justin DeRose, Matthew F. Bekker, Isaac Hart, Simon Brewer, Jerry Spangler, Erick Robinson, Mark Abbott, S. Yoshi Maezumi, Brian F. Codding