Sunday, August 12, 2018

Kakadu on fire




A review of "Fire in Tropical Savannas: The Kapalga Experiment" 

In 1990, a group of mad scientists torched an entire tropical savannah in Australia, just to see what would happen. Dr. Strangelove, much?

OK, no. Not really.

In reality, man-made fires are often lit in the tropical savannas of northern Australia for land management reasons. The fire experiments in Kapalga, a part of the Kakadu National Park, were carried out under strictly controlled conditions in 1990-94. One of the photos in this book actually shows the fire trucks which made sure that the fires didn't spread outside the designated area!

The rest of the book is a scientific-technical and somewhat boring look on the results of these experiments.
For advanced biologists only.

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