Oregon State University researchers have teamed with the Karuk Tribe to create a novel computer simulation model that showcases Indigenous fire stewardship’s role in forest ecosystem health.
Oregon State University researchers have teamed with the Karuk Tribe to create a novel computer simulation model that showcases Indigenous fire stewardship’s role in forest ecosystem health.
Western scientists and land managers have become increasingly cognizant of cultural burning but its extent and purpose are generally absent from fire modeling research, said Skye Greenler, who led the partnership when she was a graduate research fellow in the OSU College of Forestry.
“We developed this project in collaboration with the Karuk Tribe to explore the impact of cultural burning at a landscape scale in a completely new way,” she said. “The information that went into this model is not new at all – it’s been held by Karuk Tribal members for millennia – but we developed new methods to bring the knowledge together and display it in a way that showcases the extent of Indigenous cultural stewardship across this landscape.”
Read more at: Oregon State University
Collaborative prescribed fire with cultural objectives near Somes Bar, California. (Photo Credit: Frank Lake of the Forest Service, an OSU alum and a Karuk Tribal descendant)
