Aaron Vinsel
ARCH-4980.2 | Julia Watson, Assistant Professor
PYRO[BIO]DIVERSE AGRARIANSIM
AARON VINSEL
Fire has been used by many cultures throughout the world as a land management strategy as well as an ecological driver. On the island of Madagascar, the use of fire has been seen in both the forests as well as the grasslands for as long as the island has existed. Subsistence farmers, who dominate the population in Madagascar, use slash and burn methods in order to clear land for agricultural use. The uncontrolled system of land use coupled with the Government’s resistance to burning has caused the primary forest of the island to be reduced by an estimated 85 percent. In 2009, the Malagasy Government revoked the ability for farmers to obtain burning permits, leaving many communities without the means to clear land for agriculture and unable to farm on their current, overly used land.
This project aims to allow the farming communities of the Island to exist within the overall fire ecology by creating a system that would protect the forest from human-ignited fires as well as protect human settlements from large-scale forest fires. The fire control system is a proposed three-tier system in which large plots of forest land are created so that fires can be allowed to burn without interference and are protected by firebreaks so that large-scale forest destruction does not occur. These firebreaks will be a series of eco-tourism bicycle paths with fire towers located along ridges for the monitoring of both controlled burning as well as forest fires. A burn belt would be established around clear land, utilizing the Islands impressive fire resistant species of trees as a buffer for fire movement. At the community level, a flanking channel would be established in order to flank fire around the communities and into the prevailing wind so that the burns would die out quickly. These channels would then serve as an organizing element for the community’s future growth.