Wildland Arson as Clandestine Resource Management: A Space–Time Permutation Analysis and Classification of Informal Fire Management Regimes in Georgia, USA

Abstract

Forest managers are increasingly recognizing the value of disturbance-based land management techniques such as prescribed burning. Unauthorized, “arson” fires are common in the southeastern United States where a legacy of agrarian cultural heritage persists amidst an increasingly forest-dominated landscape. This paper reexamines unauthorized fire-setting in the state of Georgia, USA from a historical ecology perspective that aims to contribute to historically informed, disturbance-based land management. A space–time permutation analysis is employed to discriminate systematic, management-oriented unauthorized fires from more arbitrary or socially deviant fire-setting behaviors. This paper argues that statistically significant space–time clusters of unauthorized fire occurrence represent informal management regimes linked to the legacy of traditional land management practices. Recent scholarship has pointed out that traditional management has actively promoted sustainable resource use and, in some cases, enhanced biodiversity often through the use of fire. Despite broad-scale displacement of traditional management during the 20th century, informal management practices may locally circumvent more formal and regionally dominant management regimes. Space–time permutation analysis identified 29 statistically significant fire regimes for the state of Georgia. The identified regimes are classified by region and land cover type and their implications for historically informed disturbance-based resource management are discussed.