Using sedaDNA to assess the impact of cultural ecological
management
Anthropogenic transformation can lead to significant changes to a
landscape (Garcés-Pastor et al., 2021), and sedaDNA may assist in
assessing these effects through time to inform contemporary ecological
management plans. Environmental conditions and drivers can be revealed
through microbial (Pérez et al., 2022), fungal (Talas, Stivrins, Veski,
Tedersoo, & Kisand, 2021) and plant (Edwards et al., 2021; Hudson et
al., 2022) sedaDNA. This would be of great benefit in areas where
Traditional Knowledges are drawing the attention of non-Indigenous
stakeholders, such as the fire-based ecology in Australia. Ecological
management practices that utilise fire are integrated in many cultures
around the world, including Aboriginal Australians (Coughland & Petty,
2012). Also referred to as cultural burning, the fire-based ecological
practices of Aboriginal peoples go as far back as the early Holocene
(Matthew A Adeleye, Haberle, Connor, Stevenson, & Bowman, 2021) and
have had clear ecological impacts on animal and plant populations
(Matthew Adesanya Adeleye, Haberle, Ondei, & Bowman, 2022; Bowman,
1998). Associating ecological communities identified by sedaDNA in
stratigraphic horizons with the concentration of charcoal in the
sediment can elucidate the effects of fire on the local environment.
Landscapes subject to cultural burnings have greater habitat diversity
than comparable regions (Bliege Bird, Bird, Codding, Parker, & Jones,
2008), and the cumulative effects of fire practice over generations lead
to the maintenance of high biodiversity (Bliege Bird et al., 2008). The
anthropological justifications for this ecological manipulation by
cultural burning vary by social and geographic necessity (Gott, 2005;
Hill, Griggs, & Bamanga Bubu Ngadimunku, 2000; Yibarbuk et al., 2001).
The cultural entwining of fire practices cannot be disentangled from
socio-cultural practices (Yibarbuk et al., 2001). The following
represent examples of diversity in the practical applications of
cultural burnings and are not an exhaustive or exclusive list for the
different Indigenous peoples mentioned. Peoples of the Ngaanyatjarra
language group in the Western Desert of Australia have associated a
decline in desert mammals, specifically the mitika(Bettongia leseur or rat-kangaroo) with a cessation in cultural
burning (Burrows & Christensen, 1990). In south east Australia, annual
burnings kept scrublands open for seed germination and movement across
Country and in the north maintained diversity of food sources from both
plants and animals on Yolngu Country (Gott, 2005; Yibarbuk et al.,
2001). The Kuku-Yulanji people of Tropical North East Australia manage
the interface of tropical rainforest and open grass-and-bush lands, and
each environment’s unique resources, through cultural burning (Hill et
al., 2000). Some Australian seeds have an obligate fire response to
germinate and the increase of vegetative diversity is beneficial to
humans and other animals (Bell, Plummer, & Taylor, 1993; Gott, 2005).
Identifying changes in sedaDNA communities associated with changes in
charcoal concentration would allow identification of wildfires both
natural and anthropogenic, where a plateau in species diversity
associated with higher charcoal concentration could indicate the
presence of cultural burnings. Further, and with relevance to
contemporary ecology, cultural burning can control wildfire spread
(Coughlan & Petty, 2012; Mariani et al., 2022). It is reported that
Traditional Knowledges of fire practices have adapted in many cases to
manage the landscape formed by European colonisation (Matthew Adesanya
Adeleye, Connor, Haberle, Herbert, & Brown, 2021; Coughlan & Petty,
2012; Hill et al., 2000; Yibarbuk et al., 2001). Collectively,
Traditional Knowledges that mediate cultural burning are clearly
important in understanding Australian ecology now and in the past and
connecting Traditional Knowledges with sedaDNA has the potential to
inform ecological management practices.