A Greenhouse Research Talk by Charlotte Wrigley, research fellow at the University of Stavanger
Wildfires in the boreal zone are an increasing effect of the climate crisis but are also an integral part of forest ecosystems. With northern nations experimenting with prescribed burning to reduce fuel load and increase biodiversity, it is important to recognize the complex histories that have produced the patchwork boreal fire landscape, stretching from Alaska to the tip of Siberia. Fires in the boreal zone often occupy a different material quality to the raging infernos of the South: that of the smoulder. The smoulder, found at its most intense in so-called ‘zombie’ fires which burn in peat soils over winter, can be discursively harnessed as a way of understanding northern fire history. Through the story of a seed that grows in the hot ashes of a fire, this talk uses the category of the smoulder to produce an incomplete fire history of Finnskogen, Norway, that is culturally-embedded, non-linear, and ephemeral.
Charlotte Wrigley (she/her) is a research fellow at the Greenhouse Centre for Environmental Humanities at the University of Stavanger with a particular interest in the geography and history of the Arctic and northern environments. She is currently the principal investigator of ‘Good Fire’, a study into prescribed burning and fire ecologies in boreal landscapes, and has conducted projects on Arctic rewilding, subterranean boreholes, and permafrost. She is the author of the book Earth Ice Bone Blood: Permafrost and Extinction in the Russian Arctic, which was the recipient of the 2023 AAG Globe Prize for public understanding of geography.