000 01852nam a22001577a 4500
999 _c296815
_d296815
020 _a9780198734840
082 _a363 SCO-B
100 _aAndrew C. Scott
245 _aBurning Planet: The Story of Fire Through Time
260 _aOxford, UK
_bOxford University Press
_c2018
300 _axi, 231 pages, 10 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps ; 25 cm
505 _aIntroducing fire -- Getting dirty: what charcoal can tell us -- Kindling -- The rise, fall, and rise of fire -- Fire, flowers, and dinosaurs -- Fire and the coming of the modern world -- Prometheus -- The future of fire.
520 _aRaging wildfires have devastated vast areas of California and Australia in recent years, and predictions are that we will see more of the same in coming years as a result of climate change. But this is nothing new. Since the dawn of life on land, large-scale fires have played their part in shaping life on Earth. Andrew C. Scott tells the whole story of fire's impact on our planet's atmosphere, climate, vegetation, ecology, and the evolution of plant and animal life. It has caused mass extinctions, and it has propelled the spread of flowering plants. The exciting evidence we can now draw on has been preserved in fossilized charcoal, found in rocks hundreds of millions of years old, from all over the world. These reveal incredibly fine details of prehistoric plants, and tell us about climates from deep in earth's history. They also give us insight into how early hominids and humans tamed fire and used it. Looking at the impact of wildfires in our own time, Scott also looks forward to how we might better manage them in future, as climate change has an increasing effect on our world.
650 _a Fire--History. Fire ecology. Forest fires. Wildfires. Fire management.
942 _cBK