Burning Table Mountain : an environmental history of fire on the Cape Peninsula
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Burning Table Mountain : an environmental history of fire on the Cape Peninsula
（Palgrave studies in world environmental history）
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014
- : hardback
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 276-290) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Cape Town's iconic Table Mountain and the surrounding peninsula has been a crucible for attempts to integrate the social and ecological dimensions of wild fire. This environmental history of humans and wildfire outlines these interactions from the practices of Khoikhoi herders to the conflagrations of January 2000. The region's unique, famously diverse fynbos vegetation has been transformed since European colonial settlement, through urbanisation and biological modifications, both intentional (forestry) and unintentional (biological invasions). In all the diverse visions people have formed for Table Mountain, aesthetic and utilitarian, fire has been regarded as a central problem. This book shows how scientific understandings of fire in fynbos developed slowly in the face of strong prejudices. Human impacts were intensified in the twentieth century, which provides the temporal focus for the book. The disjunctures between popular perception, expert knowledge, policy and management are explored, and the book supplements existing short-term scientific data with proxies on fire incidence trends recovered from historical records.
Table of Contents
Introduction PART I: FIRE AT THE CAPE FROM PREHISTORY TO 1900 1. Fire at the Cape: From Prehistory to 1795 2. Fire at the Cape: British Colonial Rule, 1795-1900 PART II: FYNBOS AND FIRE RESEARCH MANAGEMENT, C.1900-99 3. Science, Management, and Fire in fynbos: 1900-45 4. Science, Management, and Fire in fynbos: 1945-99 PART III: FIRE ON THE CAPE PENINSULA, 1900-2000 5. Fire Geography and Urbanisation on the Cape Peninsula 6. Conserving Table Mountain 7. Afforestation, Plant Invasions and Fire 8. Socio-Economic Causes of Fires: Population, Utilisation and Recreation 9. Fire on the Cape Peninsula, 1900-2000 Conclusion Appendix 1: Cape Peninsula vegetation Appendix 2: Fire Causes
by "Nielsen BookData"
