Od doby, kdy na Zemi ubylo mamutů a dalších ikonických postav pleistocenní megafauny, stal se oheň důležitým konzumentem biomasy. O málo později ho lidé začali využívat k rozbíjení všeobecné nadvlády lesů a křovin, které od nástupu současného interglaciálu pohlcovaly srážkově bohatší oblasti globální souše. Střední Evropa v tom nebyla výjimkou a dnes máme za to, že by řízené požáry mohly najít skvělé uplatnění při péči o některá chráněná území. Takový přístup se již začíná uplatňovat ve Spojených státech, Kanadě, Austrálii nebo ve Středozemí. Tedy v územích, kde jsou ničivé lesní požáry s postupující klimatickou změnou a zarůstáním opuštěných kulturních krajin mnohem častější, což nám s brutální názorností připomněly katastrofické události letošního léta.
Citovaná a použitá literatura
BOBEK, Přemysl, et al. Divergent fire history trajectories in Central European temperate forests revealed a pronounced influence of broadleaved trees on fire dynamics. Quaternary Science Reviews, 2019, 222: 105865.
NOVÁK, Jan; SÁDLO, Jiří; SVOBODOVÁ-SVITAVSKÁ, Helena. Unusual vegetation stability in a lowland pine forest area (Doksy region, Czech Republic). The Holocene, 2012, 22.8: 947-955.
POKORNÝ, Petr, et al. Managing wilderness? Holocene-scale, human-related disturbance dynamics as revealed in a remote, forested area in the Czech Republic. The Holocene, 2022, 32.6: 584-596.
POKORNÝ, Petr, et al. Palaeoenvironmental research of the Schwarzenberg Lake, southern Bohemia, and exploratory excavations of this key Mesolithic archaeological area. Památky archeologické, 2010, 101.
ŠAMONIL, Pavel, et al. The disturbance regime of an Early Holocene swamp forest in the Czech Republic, as revealed by dendroecological, pollen and macrofossil data. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 2018, 507: 81-96.
Once mammoths and other members of the Pleistocene megafauna had gone extinct on Earth, fire became an important consumer of living and non-living biomass, while people domesticated it and started using it for various purposes. Among other reasons, to challenge the general predominance of forests and bushes, which since the onset of the current interglacial have absorbed precipitation-rich areas of the global landmass. The human–vegetation–fire relationship was so intense against the backdrop of Holocene climate development that we cannot clearly separate the individual components of fire dynamics from each other. We therefore speak collectively of "anthropogenic fire regimes", by which we mean the manifestations of this mutual relationship on large temporal (centuries to millennia) and large spatial (landscape) scales. For a long time, it was believed that these issues did not concern Central Europe, but the latest palaeoecological research and even the current fires, which consumed 860,000 ha of European forests last year alone, show the opposite. It is not even ruled out that the anthropogenic fire regime had a major influence on the formation of Holocene forest ecosystems with the dominance of non-flammable beech and, on the contrary, highly flammable pine, and that it was an important factor in the retrogressive development of soils and the ongoing nutrient depletion of entire ecosystems.
