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Contemporary fire regimes and elephant impacts in Baikiaea-dominated woodlands of the Chobe region, northern Botswana
Abstract
Background and Aims: We assess the status of fire regimes in Botswana’s premium wildlife eco-tourism Chobe region, and ask whether market-based fire management could be applied to support broader ecological fire management and employment outcomes. Methods: We: (1) reconstruct fire regimes from the early 1990s coinciding with the cessation of commercial timber exploitation; (2) combine automated MODIS 250m and manually derived Landsat 30m burn scar products to generate a 33year Fire Frequency Index (FFI); (3) classify regional vegetation structural types derived from a 5-year (2021-2024) median early dry season Landsat image; (4) assess dry season elephant population density distributions in relation to fire occurrence. Key results: Overall, we report frequent (on average once every 2.5 years) predominantly relatively severe late dry season fires, characteristically in more open-canopied legume-dominated savannas and grasslands in the eastern sector of the region. Dry season elephant distributions were independent of fire occurrence. Wildfires plausibly cause relatively greater impacts to Baikiaea-dominated vegetation macro-structure than elephants. Conclusions and Implications: Multiple factors, including national fire exclusion policy, contribute to contemporary fire patterning in the Chobe regional landscape. We suggest that carbon market-based approaches have potential for contributing to ecologically sustainable fire management and local employment opportunities.
WF25034 Accepted 14 May 2025
© CSIRO 2025
