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Over the last twenty years the combined effects of El Niñno-induced droughts and land-use change have greatly increased the frequency of fire incidents in humid tropical forests. Despite the potential for rapid ecosystem alteration and the current prevalence of wildfire disturbance, the consequences of such fires for tropical forest biodiversity remain poorly understood. This chapter provides a pantropical review of the current state of knowledge on these fires, including new data from seasonally dry forests in central Brazilian Amazonia. Tree mortality and changes in forest structure are strongly linked to burn severity. Despite the paucity of data on faunal responses to tropical forest fires, some trends are becoming apparent; for example, large canopy frugivores and understorey insectivorous birds appear to be highly sensitive to changes in forest structure and composition during the first years following fires. Finally, the viability of techniques and legislation for reducing forest flammability and preventing anthropogenic ignition sources from coming into contact with flammable forests is tested.

Some Norman forests were directly controlled by the landlord, and some were a part of the shared manorial common lands. The latter were held and used for timber or pasture by the tenants and freeholders and eventually cleared completely. Modern rights to forested land were formed in the landlord's own woods, for hunting and recreation, fuel supply, and leasing to a timber contractor. The rights of many lords were restricted, tied up in settlements requiring that the timber be left intact. In law the timber stand was attached to and so part of the land. By dealing with a contractor, did an owner thereby also sell his interest in the land, lease the land with a right to remove its timber; license the contractor to enter and remove the timber, or sell the trees only? All disputed cases showed that the answer somehow depended on duration of the right. A leading case in 1957 found that if the trees were still growing, they were part of the land but if they were mature they were chattels merely warehoused on the land, to be dealt in separately. Turning to the exclusivity characteristic, it is shown how nuisance law and government intervention were adapted for forest fires. The chapter turns to two neglected property-right opportunities. One concerns multiple-owner, multiple-use forests: the adaptation of specialized forest rights for price-mechanism selection among competing land uses and products. The second is to broaden the existence of ‘tree tenures’ so that forest landowners can lease out the right for a holder to bring on successive stands of timber.

This chapter examines how in the urge for scientific forestry, the foresters in Assam took recourse to the local experiences. It also discusses how both scientific management and commercialization of forests began to mould the history of forest conservation in Assam. Under the colonial rule, the Assam forests were subjected to the application of science. Intricate scientific experiments were carried out inside the Assam forests and these include forest plantations, silvicultural practices, taungya cultivation, and regulation of forest fires or insects. Throughout the early nineteenth century, science contributed to the various aspects of Assam forests. Although dependence on science in the late nineteenth century diminished, the entire forest management came to depend on science in the twentieth century. This transformed the commercial character of the forests including forest behaviour and its ecological system. In the long run, it was science that transformed the character of the local forest landscape.

This chapter turns to the role of fire in forest ecology. The British army chose the Carmel woodland for staging a final blow against the vanquished Ottoman forces to take control of Palestine at the end of World War I. The trees survived all this, as well as intermittent forest fires that have struck the Carmel over the millennia. Indeed, fire became a critical component of the local forest ecology that evolved. The chapter notes that the blaze of 2010 was qualitatively different in its ferocity. The chapter describes what happened during and after this blaze and others of similar character and how they have been managed. The number of forest fires in Israel has increased dramatically over the past twenty years, despite increased sophistication in prevention and response. The story of Israel's fight to save its forests from fires is an impressive one.

This is a review of the biogeochemical processes that control speciation and transport of inorganic mercury and methylmercury in soils. Mercury storage is discussed with respect to well-drained temperate and tropical soils. Review of mercury speciation in these soils is in relation to the chemical environment, especially soil organic matter and soil minerals. Transformation processes are reviewed mainly with respect to mercury reduction and volatilization. The role of vegetation type and soil disturbance, especially forest fires, on soil mercury storage and cycling is also discussed.

This chapter focuses on the introduction of the science of forestry to Oaxaca from 1926 to 1956. It describes the efforts of the forest officials in protecting forests during the 1930s by building a relationship between indigenous communities and the state. The chapter also explores the Zapotec people’s perspective of forestry and logging along with theories about the forests, floods, and fires. It examines the problems the Oaxaca’s forest officials had to face, including poor communication and objections from indigenous communities. This chapter describes the methods in which communities reacted to the forest service officials’ attempts at regulating fires, which were a part of the agricultural and pastoral techniques of the region.

This chapter explores how a “natural” process generates dynamically something that is conceptually similar to a percolation cluster by using the case of forest fires. It first provides an overview of the forest-fire model, which is essentially a probabilistic cellular automata, before discussing its numerical implementation using the Python code. It then describes a representative simulation showing the triggering, growth, and decay of a large fire in a representative forest-fire model simulation on a small 100 x 100 lattice. It also considers the behavior of the forest-fire model as well as its self-organized criticality and concludes with an analysis of the advantages and limitations of wildfire management. The chapter includes exercises and further computational explorations, along with a suggested list of materials for further reading.

This chapter begins with a brief outline of the elementary physics of climate change. The increasing use of fossil fuels is adding to the natural concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere. Water vapor, CO₂, and methane (CH₄), in that order, are the three strongest natural greenhouse gases (GHGs), which are opaque to outgoing heat rays (infrared rays) from the surface of the sun-warmed earth. Acting together, the gases trap much of the sun's heat that would otherwise be radiated back to the sky. The discussion then turns to how rising temperatures affect forests. Rising temperatures in high northern latitudes, for instance, are lengthening the fire season in the evergreen forests and increasing the fire risk. A warmer climate with warmer winters is also having a marked effect on forest insects. The most spectacular example of this is the population explosion of pine bark beetles throughout the west.

On August 24, 2007, a forest fire struck the province of Ilias, a predominantly rural and semi-rural area in the Peloponnesus region of Greece. The fire killed 67 people and affected 5,392 others. It was considered the worst ‘natural disaster’ in Greece during the period 2001–2010. The economic damage was estimated to be about US $1,750,000,000; the environmental degradation was enormous. This chapter explores the immediate aftermath of the fires, the government response and the development of a grassroots network of community activists who campaigned for both compensation and the defence of their own and public lands against property developers. It considers testimony from farmers and activists and then outlines a social work student project initiated by the author at her previous higher education institution, TEI Patras, which involved senior social work students working in fire-affected communities and organising with the community to raise awareness about its situation. The chapter suggests that the educational project offers valuable insight for engaged social work in post-disaster situations, and, more broadly, for a grassroots community organising social work practice.

 In this chapter, Wilma describes her first remembrance of shame and guilt. She once set up her own shop, and once a poor woman and her child showed up trying to pay for some soap. Wilma didn’t think about the consequences until afterwards, and she was met with guilt for taking money from someone less fortunate. Wilma also details the time that a forest fire ravaged Appalachia, almost destroying her home before the fire was put out.