The present environment of Australia represents a palimpsest which records a history of past climates, nutrient poor soils, burning, and increasing aridity. The details of the history are not readily disentangled…
Looking at nature and culture in Malibu, California, this paper looks at how natural processes occurring in rapid succession—over months and years—have been subject to efforts to turn the area into a tame and orderly garden as part of a linear understanding of progress, closely linked to civility and the cultivation of nature.
In 2014 and 2015 the Methow Valley in Washington State experienced the largest wildfires in the state’s history.
Christine Hansen uses the concept of deep time to challenge the idea that never-before-witnessed events are unprecedented. Using the case of a massive firestorm in 2009 in southeast Australia, she calls into question the shallow temporal frames through which deep time environmental phenomena are understood in Australian settler culture and offers an insight into often unnoticed ways in which contemporary society struggles with the colonial legacy.
This book packs into one slender volume a sweeping tale of fire, and humanity’s interactions with fire, from prehistory to the dawn of the twenty-first century.
In this Springs article, historian Tom Griffiths considers Australia’s devastating 2019 and 2020 bushfires and the cultural and worldwide impact they had.
