Living with Fire: Fire Ecology and Policy for the Twenty-First Century

摘要

This book condenses the literature on fire into a rather small volume with 135 pages of text. It is written for the lay person or someone with limited knowledge of federal fire policy and recent laws. The underlying premise of the book is that "Fire has been a part of nearly all the world's ecosystems for millennia. It plays a crucial and irreplaceable role in ecosystems that support all life.... We cannot extinguish fire permanently, so we must find a way to cope with it" (pp. 2-3). The Living with Fire volume has six chapters, with the first devoted to defining fire terms such as fire regime, fire-return interval, and fire intensity, as well as a brief summary of federal forest fire policy from the early 1900s to present. The second chapter deals with the various human influences on forests and fires, touching briefly on climate change, population growth, and extractive industries (logging and grazing).