Graduate Research Plan Statement

Title: Investigating Maine’s Indigenous Fire Prehistory to Inform Forest Management Under Global
Change
With climate change amplifying underlying environmental issues, modern wildfires have become
enormous devastating forces, costing lives, our natural resources, and billions of dollars. Early US Forest
Service practices focused on fire suppression as a management tool, which increased the presence of
underbrush, snags, and flammable material in forests1. Though these practices have changed, those initial
management plans coupled with drought, eco-tourism, and rising temperatures have led to the large-scale,
uncontrollable, high-intensity fires in the West that, as of October 1, 2020, have burned nearly 7.7 million
acres this year2.

In contrast, indigenous fire management has played an important role in the ecology of many North
American landscapes for thousands of years. Native peoples used fire to clear the land for cultivation,
promote healthy and diverse food-rich forests, and facilitate diverse wildlife habitat3. These practices
have largely been excluded in modern forest management plans. By the 1970’s the Forest Service began
utilizing indigenous knowledge to set controlled burns in the West, Southwest, and Southeast, but not in
the mixed hardwood forests of the Northeast1, where fire is not widely considered to be an important
process4. However, there have been large-scale destructive fires in the last century, like the Great Fire of
1947 in Maine. This drought-intensified fire consumed 17,188 acres, destroyed 240 buildings, and cost
over $23 million in property damages5. As climate change is causing warmer temperatures and droughts
in the Northeast6, there remains a critical need to understand the long-term history of fire (both natural
and anthropogenic) in this region.

Most of our academic knowledge about indigenous fire use in New England is largely based on journals
and other written accounts by European settlers. However, those records lack the perspectives of
indigenous people, and only explain fire use post-contact7. Historical observations and Wabanaki oral
knowledge indicate that, within the last 500 years, Native peoples used fire to clear land for agriculture,
and to improve hunting grounds south of the Kennebec River in Maine. Penobscot place names describe
areas that experienced regular burning. For example, Schoodic (skudek) Peninsula, a part of Acadia
National Park, means “burnt-land”8.

Long-term fire records from lake sediment cores and tree rings have provided another valuable source of
information about the relationships between fire, climate, vegetation, and people in the American West,
Midwest, and Southeast, but are still lacking for the Northeast, including New England. A recent study
synthesizing charcoal patterns across New England found no evidence of pre-European anthropogenic fire
use, but this reflected a regional fire record that would not highlight the more localized scale at which
indigenous peoples would have been burning4. Charcoal records in the Northeast have primarily been
taken from large bodies of water9, which are biased towards large regional fires, instead of local, low
intensity fires, which would have been the types of fires Native peoples used for land management4.
Therefore, while previous paleoecological studies have been important for understanding the large-scale
fire prehistory of New England and its relationship to climate, they are poorly suited to the study of
anthropogenic fires. And, by failing to partner with Native scholars and incorporating oral knowledge of
past land use, such studies mask indigenous peoples’ expertise and contributions to the health of the
landscape10.

Intellectual Merit
My research goal is to reconstruct localized fire records in Maine to better understand fire as a prehistoric
land management tool in New England. I will take a multi-pronged approach to this work: 1.) I will
conduct an actualistic study to identify the signals of localized understory burns and small patch clearings
in the charcoal and pollen records of forest hollows and small ponds. 2.) In collaboration with members of
the Penobscot Tribe, I will collect sediment cores from small ponds and forest hollows near settlements
and prehistoric hunting grounds to examine whether small-hollow cores can identify local, small-scale
burning. 3.) I will then synthesize these findings with existing geoarchaeological, climate, and pollen
records to assess the relationships between population and cultural shifts, climate, vegetation, and fire
histories across scales. All of the necessary equipment and facilities to carry out this project are available
at the University of Maine Climate Change Institute, and Dr. Gill is building tribal partnerships via
collaborations with Penobscot faculty at UMaine: Dr. Darren Ranco, director of the WaYS program, and
Dr. Bonnie Newsom, archaeologist. Partnership opportunities are also available at Acadia National Park
through the National Park Service.

Many fire-use studies focus on written accounts, the charcoal record, and tree scaring to reconstruct past
fire regimes, but researchers have historically excluded indigenous communities when studying past
human land use. My project will contribute to a more accurate historical record of prehistoric land use by
better matching the tools to the questions to characterize anthropogenic fire histories and impacts. This
project will also add to our understanding of charcoal records taken from small hollows. In contrast with
the pollen record, hollow-based fire records are lacking, which limits our ability to interpret stand-scale
fire impacts11.

Broader Impacts
Though fire is not considered to be an important process in the Northeast, with climate change
exacerbating existing environmental issues, it is becoming an increasingly dangerous threat. This past
summer, drought conditions and increased eco-tourism due to COVID-19 resulted in a summer of over
900 high-intensity, destructive fires in Maine6. Maine’s economy depends on logging and tourism12 and
drought-induced fires put both of those industries at great risk. This study seeks to understand low
intensity fires and will inform conservation and management practices. Such fires clear underbrush and
snags, reducing the fuel load for uncontrolled fires. This would make Maine’s forests safer while also
reducing tick populations by burning shrub species that foster these disease vectors13. Cleared underbrush
would improve forest health by reducing canopy competition and eliminating weaker diseased trees. All
of these benefits could increase timber quality and forest health, boosting two of the state’s major
industries during a time of economic uncertainty.

The Wabanaki Confederacy is a collection of Eastern Algonquin tribes including the Penobscot,
Passamaquoddy, Mi'kmaq, and Maliseet people. I plan to use my research to contribute to the Native
American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) by providing supporting evidence of long
term tribal habitation. This project will contribute to a long-term collaborative relationship with local
tribes and will provide critically needed information in support indigenous sovereignty claims. I also
intend to collaborate with the NSF-funded Wabanaki Youth in Science (WaYS) program at UMaine.
WaYS trains Wabanaki youth in both tribal knowledge and scientific approaches through summer camps
and internships. I intend to include Wabanaki students in my project by bringing groups of students out
into the field and mentoring students in the lab to learn sediment coring and paleoecological techniques.

References.
[1]Forest History Society. US Forest Service Fire Suppression. [2]Congressional Research Service.
2020. 43. [3]Ryan K.C. 2013. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. [4]Oswald, W.W. 2020. Nature
3, 241–246. [5]National Park Service, Acadia. 2020. [6]The Maine Monitor. 2020. Bangor Daily News.
[7]Ruffner, C. M. 2005. USDA: Proceedings 16th Central Hardwood Forest Conference. [8]Francis, J.E.
2008. Farms, Forest, and Fire 44(1): 4-18. [9]Patterson. 1988. Holocene Human Ecology in Northeastern
North America. [10]Kimmerer, R.W. and Lake, F. 2001. Journal of Forestry 99(11):36-41. [11]Higuera
P.E. 2005. The Holocene 15(2): 238-251. [12]US News and World Report. 2020. Best States: Maine.
[13]Gleim E.R. 2019. Nature.