The fire secrets in charcoal

If you’re curious about how Indigenous cultural burning from around 10,000 years ago has implications for current land management, Alan Williams, Mark Constantine IV and Scott Mooney write about their findings in the Conversation. Published in April, they were interested to know when cultural burning may have started in south-east Australia and over what period it was used. They investigated the accumulation of charcoal in sediments in the Sydney Basin and Illawarra regions to help understand the extent of bushfires that occurred in the past and how often they took place. Using a novel method, they were able to examine the chemical composition in the charcoal and work out the severity of past fires and their size. They examined fire severity over two periods of time around Thirlmere Lakes, one before humans were thought to have arrived and one after, and found evidence suggesting that large bushfires may have been reduced due to Indigenous cultural burning practices around 10,000 years ago. Read the full article here.