KU professor’s new research focuses on Indigenous controlled burn practices

LAWRENCE (KSNT) – University of Kansas professor, Melinda Adams, recently wrote in two scholarly journal articles highlighting her work with indigenous peoples and their controlled burn practices.

Adams is one of seven scholars who worked on a new paper titled, “Tree rings reveal persistent Western Apache (Ndee) fire stewardship and niche construction in the American Southwest,” which examined almost 650 sets of tree rings from the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona. Researchers found that trees from inside the reservation benefited from controlled “cultural” burns.

“The climactic influence of Apache fire stewardship was the revelation of the paper,” said Adams in a press release from KU. “I believe it’s seminal work because it challenges the assumptions that dendrochronological records were produced by naturally occurring wildfire, when, in fact, reexamining the ring patterns and from questions that our research team asked, it signals and affirms that it was Indigenous peoples purposely placing fire to those landscapes.”

Adams believes her work affirms indigenous fire sovereignty and revitalizes fire stewardship as an ancient land-tending practice, as well as a current option for re-introducing responsible fire use for landscapes across the nation. She will present her work “Wildfire Resilience: Indigenous Fire Research, Policy and Data in the U.S.” at the November Research Luncheon from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Nov. 7 at the Watson Library, 3 West Reading Room in Lawrence.

For more information on the presentation and registration details, you can do so at this link.

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