Fire Archaeology: Protecting cultural resources from the impacts of climate change on public lands

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Bridging Science and Service: How Archaeologists Address Climate Change" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

One of the four main strategic goals of the United States Department of the Interior is to conserve, protect, manage, and restore natural and cultural resources despite climate change and other stressors. To achieve this goal, the Bureau of Land Management's Battle Mountain District Office, which oversees over 10 million acres of public lands in central Nevada, developed a robust fuels program to address the increasing intensity and frequency of wildfires in the region. The fuels program incorporates Fire Archaeology to ensure that efforts to reduce wildfire frequencies and intensities do not negatively impact cultural heritage. Additionally, Fire Archaeology helps to minimize damage from wildfire suppression activities and mitigate the impacts of wildfire damage to cultural heritage. This paper outlines the Battle Mountain District Office’s Fire Archaeology program and discusses the role of archaeology in wildfire incidents.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Bridging Science and Service: How Archaeologists Address Climate Change   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50826