fire-stick farming

Information about fire-stick farming

Fire-stick farming is a term coined by Australian archaeologist Rhys Jones in 1969 to describe the practice of Indigenous Australians where fire was used regularly to burn vegetation to facilitate hunting and to change the composition of plant and animal species in an area.

Fire-stick farming had the long-term effect of turning scrub into grassland, increasing the population of nonspecific grass eating species like the kangaroo. The ecological disturbance caused by fire-stick farming has been implicated in the extinction of the Australian megafauna.

In wet and dry sclerophyll forests, firestick farming opened the canopy and allowed germination of understory plants necessary for increasing the carrying capacity of the local environment for browsing marsupials.

See also

References

  • Jones, R. 1969. Fire-stick Farming. Australian Natural History, 16:224
  • Miller, G. H. 2005. Ecosystem Collapse in Pleistocene Australia and a Human Role in Megafaunal Extinction. Science, 309:287-290
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Rhys Maengwyn Jones (1941 – September 19, 2001) was a Welsh-Australian archeologist.

Jones was born in Wales. He received his PhD at Cambridge University specialising in the economic and technological interactions of Stone Age people.
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Indigenous Australians are descendants of the first known human inhabitants of the Australian continent and its nearby islands. The term includes both the Torres Strait Islanders and the Aboriginal People, who together make up about 2.5% of Australia's population.
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species is one of the basic units of biological classification. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring.
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Scrubland is plant community characterized by scrub vegetation. "Scrub" consists of low shrubs, mixed with grasses, herbs, and geophytes. Scrublands are sometimes known as heathlands. Scrublands may be either naturally occurring or the result of human activity.
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Grasslands are areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses (Poaceae) and other herbaceous (non-woody) plants (forbs). Grasslands occur naturally on all continents except Antarctica, and in many other areas they have replaced the natural vegetation due to human influence.
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Australian megafauna is a term used to describe a number of comparatively large animal species in Australia. These species became extinct during the Pleistocene (20,000-50,000 years before present), but exact dates for their extinction have been lacking until recently.
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Sclerophyll is a type of vegetation that has hard leaves and short internodes (the distance between leaves along the stem). The word comes from the Greek sclero (hard) and phyllon (leaf).
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The canopy is the uppermost level of a forest, formed by the tree crowns. Canopy trees refers to the trees in a forest which form the canopy. The uneven layers of the canopy is formed by both dominant and co-dominant trees.
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Germination is the process where growth emerges from a period of dormancy. The most common example of germination is the sprouting of a seedling from a seed of an angiosperm or gymnosperm.
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Understory (or understorey) is the term for the area of a forest which grows in the shade of the emergent or canopy forest canopy. Plants in the understory consist of a mixture of seedlings and sapplings of canopy trees together with understory shrubs and herbs.
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The equilibrium maximum of the population of an organism is known as the ecosystem's carrying capacity for that organism. Generally it is the supportable population of an organism, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available within an ecosystem.
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Browser can refer to:
  • A herbivore whose nutrition generally comes from high growing plants
  • A user interface on a computer that allows navigation of objects

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Marsupialia
Illiger, 1811

Orders
  • Didelphimorphia
  • Paucituberculata
  • Microbiotheria
  • Dasyuromorphia
  • Peramelemorphia
  • Notoryctemorphia
  • Diprotodontia
  • Sparassodonta (extinct)
  • Yalkaparidontia (extinct)
Marsupials
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Prescribed or controlled burning (back burning) is a technique sometimes used in forest management, farming, prairie restoration or greenhouse gas abatement. Fire is a natural part of both forest and grassland ecology and controlled fire can be a tool for foresters.
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Slash and burn refers to the cutting and burning of forests or woodlands to create fields for agriculture or pasture for livestock, or for a variety of other purposes. It is sometimes part of shifting cultivation agriculture, and of transhumance livestock herding.
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Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is considered one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals. The journal is peer-reviewed, is published weekly, and has a print subscriber base of around 130,000.
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Indigenous Australians are descendants of the first known human inhabitants of the Australian continent and its nearby islands. The term includes both the Torres Strait Islanders and the Aboriginal People, who together make up about 2.5% of Australia's population.
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Lists of Indigenous Australians by occupation and historic contribution.

Various indigenous Australian cultures consider the reference of deceased persons - whether in name or in image - to be taboo.
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List of Indigenous Australian group names contains names and collective designations which have been applied, either formerly or in the past, to groups of Indigenous Australians.
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Torres Strait Islanders are the indigenous people of the Torres Strait Islands, part of Queensland, Australia. They are Melanesians culturally akin to the coastal peoples of Papua New Guinea.
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Numerous Indigenous Australians have been notable for their contributions to politics, including participation in governments and activism in Australia. Others are noted for their public service, generally and in specific areas like law and education.
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Numerous Indigenous Australians and noted sportspeople.

Athletics (track and field)

  • Cathy Freeman
  • Nova Peris-Kneebone
  • Patrick Johnson

Australian rules football

  • Barry Cable
  • Graham "Polly" Farmer
  • Jeff Farmer
  • Adam Goodes

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Numerous Indigenous Australians are noted for their participation in, and contributions to, the visual arts in Australia and abroad.
  • Tjyllyungoo (Lance Chadd)
  • Ian Abdulla
  • Brook Andrew
  • William Barak
  • Richard Bell
  • Gordon Bennett
  • Mervyn Bishop

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Comedy

  • Mark Bin Bakar -- actor & comedian

Dance

  • Stephen Page
  • Frances Rings

Film, television and theatre

  • Kylie Belling -- actor
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Numerous Indigenous Australians are notable for their contributions to Australian literature and journalism.

Literature

  • Edward Warrigal Anderson - novelist, winner of the David Unaipon Award in the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards

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This is a list of Indigenous Australian musicians.

Solo artists

  • Christine Anu (Torres Strait Islander)
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  • Kev Carmody

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Aboriginal Australia contains a large number of tribal divisions and language groups, and, corresponding to this, a wide variety of diversity exists within cultural practices. There are some similarities between cultures however.
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