Stephen G Pyne

Dec 10, 2024 | hnn.us | Stephen G Pyne

New England’s recent outbreak of fires has seemed to some observers as both a novelty and a harbinger of a climate-deranged world to come. More aptly, the flames harken back to a fire-rich if forgotten past. In New England fire does not display the singular presence it has in Florida or California; it is one ecological character among many. But as an ineradicable companion to people, it is always there, and from time to time, like a dormant fault, it ruptures.

Jul 31, 2024 | canadiangeographic.ca | Stephen G Pyne

My own contribution, the distilled musings of a lifelong pyromantic, is to track how the mutual-assistance pact between fire and humanity has reshaped the Earth. To those observers who say our planetary future is so strange that we have no narrative by which to connect that future to our familiar past and no analogue by which to guide our response, I reply that we have both. The narrative is the unbroken saga of humanity and fire.

Apr 12, 2024 | scientificamerican.com | Stephen G Pyne

When I was 18, a few days after graduating from high school, I found myself on a forest fire crew at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. I returned for 15 seasons, 12 as crew boss, and I became a pyromantic. For those years I lived one life at a university and another on the canyon’s North Rim. On a fire crew, you quickly learn how fires can shape a season and how seasons can shape a life. I found a way to reconcile my two lives and became a scholar on fire.

Jan 18, 2024 | science.org | Carmen Martin-Alonso |Carlo Cervia-Hasler |Ewan D. Barr |Stephen G Pyne

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Jan 18, 2024 | sciencemag.org | Carmen Martin-Alonso |Carlo Cervia-Hasler |Ewan D. Barr |Stephen G Pyne

eLetters is a forum for ongoing peer review. eLetters are not edited, proofread, or indexed, but they are screened. eLetters should provide substantive and scholarly commentary on the article. Embedded figures cannot be submitted, and we discourage the use of figures within eLetters in general. If a figure is essential, please include a link to the figure within the text of the eLetter. Please read our Terms of Service before submitting an eLetter.