Essay On Forest Fire

1.1. Introduction
Fire is a significant evolutionary force, and is one of the first tools that human used to reshape their world (Bond and Keeley 2005). Evidence of fire is found first in the Carboniferous age 400 million year ago forming fusains or fossilized charcoal in coal deposits (Spinage, 2012). During Carboniferous period there were adequate numbers of terrestrial plants and lightning to provide ignition. Charcoal layers as indicators of ancient fires have been recorded in fossils dating back to the boundary between Devonian and Carboniferous (Komarek 1973, Jones and Rowe 1999). Therefore, forest fires are as old as the forests themselves. This can also be seen as an evolutionary relationship; plants and other species residing terrestrial environments have in the progression of time at least co-existed, if not co-evolved with more or less recurrent fires (Pyne

Dry forests are the most common of tropical forest types (Holdridge, 1967). They comprise 42% of all areas occupied by tropical or subtropical forests (Murphy and Lugo 1986). Dry forest regions also have the highest human population densities in the neo- tropics (Murphy and Lugo 1986). Janzen (1988) stated that tropical dry forests are the most threatened of all major tropical forest types. Because of relatively long and intensive land-use histories, tropical dry forests are considered among the world's most exploited and endangered ecosystems (Janzen 1988). Increasing human population density is resulting in unprecedented rates of exploitation and conversion to agriculture (WRI 1990). In spite of their large areal extent and high level of exploitation, tropical dry forests are probably the least studied of tropical ecosystems, receiving far less attention than either savannas or rain forests (Murphy and Lugo