Two decades ago, in my book on fire in Madagascar published at the University of Chicago Press, I made an educated guess that “in grasslands, roughly one-quarter to one-half of the surface burns annually“. A footnote fills over half of the page to justify my estimate, drawing from local studies, observations, government statistics, and rudimentary satellite data. I am thrilled to report that a just-published study confirms this estimate and makes it more precise, finding that 32% or so of the grasslands burn each year. The study takes advantage of newer satellite images that are more frequent and higher resolution to make its estimates, catching smaller and more ephemeral (quickly regreening) fire patches. Congratulations to Víctor Fernández-García on leading this work, funded by a Swiss Network for International Studies grant.
Like over a million (!) other viewers, I was captivated by the recent video “What’s inside this crater in Madagascar?” by Christophe Haubursin on Vox. Curiosity, satellite images, internet, a budget for a talented local filmmaker, and excellent production allow the team to explore why a village appears out of nothing fifteen years ago inside a remote broad, circular mountain in central Madagascar. Having spent days and days poring over historical air photos and maps of highland Madagascar for my own research, I palpably felt empathy for Haubursin’s landscape voyeurism. Then imagine my excitement as I realised I’ve been there myself, almost at the village site, on the southern summit of the mountain Ambohiby, in 1999, before it was built!
In this post, I’ll do two things: comment on some photos from my 1999 climb of Ambohiby, and give some leads for people looking to read further on the colonisation of empty lands in highland Madagascar, as I have been researching the settlement of new lands by Betsileo farmers since my masters thesis fieldwork in 1994.
My photo of the view north from Ambohiby summit in July 1999. The new village site Anosibe Ambohiby would be in the burn scar in the middle. Read the rest of this entry »
During a recent visit to Antananarivo, I had the privilege of presenting my work on fire to a diverse audience of researchers and policymakers (some around the seminar table, others online). While the presentation largely drew on my now dated work for Isle of Fire, the detailed discussion very much linked it to events in 2022, including terrible forest fires at Ankarafantsika and annual smoke emergencies in the capital.
Bushfire is often seen as symbolic of environmental catastrophe on Madagascar. But is it? A global comparison of fire regimes based on satellite image data suggests care in jumping to such conclusions. A recent article in Global Change Biology, led by Leanne Phelps and to which I contributed, finds that the island’s fire regimes have analogues to 88% of fire regimes in the global tropics with similar climate and vegetation. Madagascar’s fires, while exceptionally vilified, are not exceptional. It also demonstrates that the large, landscape-scale grassland fires common across highland and western Madagascar have no relationship to forest loss; indeed forest loss occurs in places without large-scale fires.
Figure 3 from Phelps et al. (2022). Colours represent areas with similar fire regimes (clustered based on burnt area, fire size, seasonality, and numbers of fires). Black pixels represent fire regimes not found on Madagascar. Gray pixels are places without landscape-scale fire regimes. Photos: (a) tapia branch and chameleon at Ibity, (b) uncontrolled, peri-urban landscape fire in Ambositra [photo C. Kull, 2019], (c) a forest-savanna boundary in Ambohitantely, (d) ancient biodiverse grasslands on Ibity, (e) landscape fire in an agricultural region near Ambositra, likely for grassland renewal [photo by C. Kull, 1998/9], (f) tree cover on a forest-savanna boundary in Ambohitantely, (g) smallholder land use on Ibity.Read the rest of this entry »
Congratulations to the team from the “Forest4Climate&People” project at ESSA-Forêts (University of Antananarivo) and the School of Natural Sciences (Bangor University) for this fantastic short film. It is both beautifully done and really informative. Wonderful images as well as guitar picking by D’Gary. And most of all, it has a strong and clear message, contained in the subtitle, that advocates “putting local people at the heart of decisions about tropical forest’s contribution to tackling climate change”.
Malagasy grasslands are often ignored, or worse, deplored. Biological research concentrates in the forests, many still shrinking despite conservation efforts. Yet research by plant ecologist Cédrique Solofondranohatra adds another layer of argument to the case that Malagasy grasslands have an ancient history and are important reservoirs of biodiversity themselves. Despite this, recent tree-planting efforts for climate change mitigation (of the ‘trillion trees‘ mode) often seem to take the easy path formed by a century of habit: planting exotic pines, acacias, and eucalypts in the grasslands, perceived as open, available, fire-damaged, and worthless. A much more laudable goal would be to restore trees to areas recently deforested.
In what situations do the practices of small-scale family farmers lead to increased tree cover, particularly on a continent better known for land degradation and deforestation? Research on the “forest transition”, a pattern where net deforestation is replaced by a net gain in forest cover, has so far avoided much mention of Africa. In contrast, it is historically documented in western Europe, eastern North America, east Asia, and seemingly underway in parts of Latin America and Southeast Asia. This research tends to focus on factors such as economic modernisation, rural abandonment, urbanisation, or even globalisation as driving forces of the forest transition. Two recent studies I contributed to focus instead on Africa – one in West Africa, one in Madagascar – and on transitions brought about by rural farmers. Read the rest of this entry »
While a number of plants, animals, and insects in Madagascar have been called ’invasive’, the topic of invasive species has until recently received less attention here than in other island contexts. Some species, often alien to Madagascar and introduced by humans, have expanded their range rapidly and have had both negative and positive effects on landscapes, on native biodiversity, and on livelihoods. Examples include the prickly pear (raketa), the silver wattle (mimosa), and, recently, the Asian common toad (radaka boka). Building on a conceptual approach, my recent paper (link; pdf) in the journal Madagascar Conservation and Development emphasizes the importance of inclusive and deliberative site- and population- specific management of invasive species. The paper analyses three separate concepts commonly used in definitions of invasion: the origin, behaviour, and effects of particular species.
The three components often used in defining invasive species. Different definitions emphasise different components. Source: Kull et al. 2014 (supplementary online material)
It places these concepts in their broader social and ecological context, with particular attention to local perspectives on invasive species. My co-authors and I illustrate these concepts with numerous Malagasy examples from the literature and our own experiences. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve finally received my copy of the new edited book Conservation and Environmental Management in Madagascar, edited by Ivan Scales of Cambridge University. This will be a fantastic resource for scholars of Madagascar new and old, as well as more broadly. It includes chapters on a full array of topics: on biodiversity, palaeoecology, and archaeology, on the measurement and causes of deforestation, on environmental politics, policies, programs, and projects, and on different economic development-and-conservation solutions, often (but not always) from a political ecology perspective, broadly construed.
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Christian Kull 