African Journal of Range & Forage Science: Call for Papers

Since pre-history, fire has been influential as an ecosystem process and has also been used by people as a tool to support livelihoods in landscapes worldwide. This is especially true in grassy ecosystems, where landscapes and ecological systems are fire-adapted and fire-dependent and where, even today, people are reliant on fire. Currently, global attitudes towards fire and its use are shaped by the impacts of fire in forests, resulting in flawed negative perspectives of the impacts and role of fire in grasslands. 

 

African Journal of Range and Forage Science is planning a special issue for publication in February 2022 titled, “Friend or Foe? Lessons from a century of evidence-based fire management in grassy ecosystems.”

 

The special issue aims to include perspectives from diverse disciplines to examine the evidence from ecological and social disciplines on fire management in grassy ecosystems. More than a century of fire experiments and applied fire management and suppression, together with modern technological advances in fire detection, mapping, and monitoring, offer a strong foundation for evidence-based fire management. 

 

The environment in which we manage fire is also changing – climatically, politically, socially and economically at scales ranging from local to regional to global – with the potential to alter essential fire regimes that support biodiversity, ecosystem services, and rural livelihoods. Understanding and managing fire to support these services presents a formidable challenge.

 

In Southern Africa the first formal scientific investigations into fire started in the early 1900’s. Although learning was common practice among traditional land managers, prevailing perceptions of fire in grassy ecosystems were negative. John William Bews and John F.V. Philips both questioned prevailing negative attitudes, calling for more empirical and experimental investigations into fire impacts and behaviors. These efforts helped to grow generations of fire ecologists, foster interactions among scientists, managers, and local communities, and raise important questions about whether the scientific approach complements or undermines indigenous knowledge and practices. One hundred years after the first scientific studies on fire impacts in southern Africa were published, it is time both to celebrate and critically assess our current understanding and progress. 

 

Guest Editors of the Special Issue will be: 

 

• Navashni Govender; Lead Guest Editor (Senior Manager: Conservation Management, Kruger National Park)

• Carla Staver, (Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University)

• Sally Archibald (Professor, School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand)

 

Deadlines for Authors:

 

• First Call/Invitation for Abstracts – 9th February 2021 

• Second Call/Invitation for Abstracts –  25th February 2021 

• Final Submission Date for Titles & Abstracts – 15th March 2021 

• Full Paper Submission – 30th June 2021

• First Revisions by Authors – 15th September 2021

• Final Revisions by Authors – 30th October 2021

 

SUBMISSIONS: Abstract submissions should be made only making use of the email address: journal@grassland.org.za 

 

Photograph Credit: SANParks - KNP