Burning Table Mountain

An Environmental History of Fire on the Cape Peninsula

S. Pooley (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

315 Seiten

2014 | 1st ed. 2014
Palgrave Macmillan (Verlag)
978-1-349-49059-2 (ISBN)

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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.

Simon Pooley is Lambert Lecturer in Environment, Department of Geography, Birkbeck University of London, UK. He has a D.Phil in Environmental History (University of Oxford) and has published on wildfire, biological invasions, crocodilian conservation, human-wildlife conflicts and doing interdisciplinary research, in several books and the major environmental history and conservation science journals.

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

Erscheinungsdatum	26.05.2016
Reihe/Serie	Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History
Zusatzinfo	XI, 315 p.
Verlagsort	Basingstoke
Sprache	englisch
Maße	140 x 216 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Allgemeines / Lexika
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Wirtschaftsgeschichte
	Studium ► Querschnittsbereiche ► Prävention / Gesundheitsförderung
	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Ökologie / Naturschutz
	Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geografie / Kartografie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Europäische / Internationale Politik
Schlagworte	Biological Invasions • Cape Peninsula • Environmental history • fire • Fynbos • History of Science • nature conservation • South Africa • South African history • table Mountain • transnational history
ISBN-10	1-349-49059-8 / 1349490598
ISBN-13	978-1-349-49059-2 / 9781349490592
Zustand	Neuware