Fires of war: how civil war shaped fire regimes in East Angola

. Research on the environmental impacts of warfare is limited and often not interdisciplinary. Of the many impacts that war can have, its effect on fire activity is particularly understudied, despite the importance of fire to livelihoods and ecosystem functioning in fire-dependent ecosystems, such as some savannas and woodlands. This article investigates the impact of the Angolan civil war on fire activity in the highlands of East Angola, an area that served as a stronghold for the "guerrilla" forces during the conflict and where local peoples have historically used fire as a livelihood tool. This study employs historical remote sensing data (derived from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's AVHRR-LTDR satellite), and interviews to 42 elders to reconstruct wartime and post-war fire regimes. Interview data suggest that fire events were rarer during the war (1975-2002) compared with the post-war period (2003- 2018), a trend corroborated by satellite-derived time-series analyses (from 1982 to 2018). We identified four main factors behind this change: limited use of fire as a warfare tool, displacement of people, strict fire governance, and changes in fire use for subsistence. This research highlights that socio-political dynamics, and particularly civil war, significantly shape fire regimes. Yet a convergence in prewar and post-war fire patterns is identified: post-war increases in burned area may reflect a return to a pre-war baseline, underscoring the need for historically informed, interdisciplinary research to identify the most suitable fire management approaches in East Angola and beyond.