Archive: 2020

Highlights from the sixth PyroLife Symposium webinar on July 08, 2020 by Rhea Shah. Vanessa Cavanaugh is a member of the Bundjalung and Wonnarua First Nations and a PhD student at Wollongong University, studying the historical, current and aspirational role of aboriginal women in cultural burning practices. She presented at the Pyrolife Symposium contextualizing fire in Australia, sharing histories and experiences of cultural burning practices, distinguishing them from Western prescribed burning. She introduced the audience to the intimate nature of cultural burning  ‘caring for Country’ amongst aboriginal communities in Australia. An introduction to Cavanaugh’s work begins with understanding Country which […]

Highlights from the fifth PyroLife Symposium webinar on July 01, 2020 by Carmen Rodriguez and Mariña Fernandez. Fire has been for centuries a modeler of Mediterranean landscapes in southern Europe. Climate change as well as current trends in land use and landscape changes are triggering extreme fire activity, posing new challenges to the region. Paulo Fernandes explains which are these new challenges, and what is the way forward. “We live with fire. But mostly, we live with the worst kind of fire” – started Paulo Fernandes, in reference to Portugal. As a professor and researcher in The University of Trás-os-Montes […]

Highlights from the fifth PyroLife Symposium webinar on July 01, 2020 by Abbey Marcotte and Mariña Fernández. During his presentation, Alexander [Alex] Held drove us through the North Western Europe, particularly Germany, in order to understand how regions that have historically been non-fire prone are facing the new reality of wildfires. Fire in these areas is creating a very complex situation of values that should be considered to understand the current situation and their adaptation to new and evolving fire risks. Considering the fire services, fire personnel are skilled and well-prepared. However, fires have changed and are not stationary anymore […]

Highlights from the fourth PyroLife Symposium webinar on June 24, 2020 by Mario Tapia. The Netherlands has an extensive history of water management and land reclamation but with increasing risks of a changing climate have turned to a new approach, living with water rather than fighting it. Fulco Ludwig explores if similar strategies can work for fire. In recent years there has been a change in perspective in how floods are approached in the Netherlands. For hundreds of years, water was a threat to be pushed out; however, that has now changed as water is now seen more as a […]

Highlights from the fourth PyroLife Symposium webinar on June 24, 2020 by Kathleen Uyttewaal. On June 24, Bertram de Rooij told us a story. As a landscape architect, applied senior researcher at WUR, and volunteer firefighter, it was far from the usual campfire story. And yet, some common threads of stories since time immemorial like creativity, imagining the future, and learning valuable lessons with people along the way all wove their way into Bertram’s narrative. He urged us to think about Envisioning Futures and Enabling Landscapes. Landscapes, after all, set the scene where everything comes together: ecological, social, political and […]