@article{Smith:2026:10.1371/journal.pone.0339561,
author = {Smith, C and Kasoar, M and Perkins, O and Millington, JDA and Mistry, J},
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0339561},
journal = {PLoS ONE},
title = {Small-scale livelihood and cultural fire: global spatiotemporal characteristics, and gaps in data},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0339561},
volume = {21},
year = {2026}
}

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TY  - JOUR
AB  - Human fire use is a key activity and process in many landscapes and ecosystems around the world, varying spatiotemporally depending on social, economic, and ecological factors. Recently, initiatives have begun to synthesise data on global fire use from across multiple disciplines and disparate sources into coherent databases. Here, we draw on information from one of these databases, the Livelihood Fire Database, which collates data on fire use practices worldwide from case studies in the literature. We examine data from 345 case study locations spanning 69 countries regarding return interval, area burned, and seasonality of anthropogenic fires set to meet small-scale rural livelihood objectives and/or for cultural reasons. We distinguish patterns in the spatiotemporal nature of fires associated with different fire-use purposes, such as clearing vegetation for agriculture, maintaining pasture for livestock, promoting certain plant species for gathering, or driving game when hunting. For many fire uses, especially those related to hunting, gathering, human wellbeing, and social signalling, there are very limited quantitative data available, but it is possible to draw qualitative insights from case studies. Case studies demonstrate that environmental and social conditions drive variation in fire use for the same purpose, reiterating that assumptions of uniform drivers of anthropogenic fire may be misleading. Nonetheless where quantitative data are available, we find some correspondence between the spatiotemporal nature of fires and fire-use purpose, suggesting that distinguishing between different fire-use purposes may be useful to understand and to better model their likely timing, size, and frequency relative to climate and other drivers. We recommend examples where the diagnosis of these broad relationships between fire-use purpose and fire properties could enable improved representation of anthropogenic fire in global land surface models, and aid interpretation of
AU  - Smith,C
AU  - Kasoar,M
AU  - Perkins,O
AU  - Millington,JDA
AU  - Mistry,J
DO  - 10.1371/journal.pone.0339561
PY  - 2026///
SN  - 1932-6203
TI  - Small-scale livelihood and cultural fire: global spatiotemporal characteristics, and gaps in data
T2  - PLoS ONE
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0339561
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0339561
VL  - 21
ER  - 

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