21/08/2026
For the third year running, MAPSS has been monitoring fire across the Greater Kafue Ecosystem in Zambia, in partnership with The Nature Conservancy and its partners across the landscape.
The monitoring supports day-to-day fire management, landscape monitoring, and conservation decision-making, so it is particularly rewarding to now see the same data contributing to science as well.
A new open-access paper published in Fire Ecology, “Fire frequency and seasonality in the miombo woodlands of the Greater Kafue Ecosystem, Zambia, and implications for fire management,” uses data from this work to better understand fire patterns across Kafue National Park and the surrounding Game Management Areas.
This is a great example of the value of long-term monitoring. Data collected to help teams understand what is happening across the landscape today can also build a stronger picture of how these ecosystems function over time and help inform future fire management.
Congratulations to the authors (Brian Van Wilgen, Hayden Wilson, and Andrew Purdon), and a big thank you to The Nature Conservancy and all the partners across the Greater Kafue Ecosystem who continue to make this work possible.
Read the paper here:
Background Frequent and extensive fires in the late dry season are a feature of the miombo woodlands of central Africa. A knowledge of prevailing fire regimes at a local scale is required to set realistic and appropriate targets that will sustainably conserve ecosystems and to plan accordingly. We u...
