Heaps of garbage, some of it on fire, littered the main road in Aba on a recent day.
Fundamental shifts in post-fire litter composition are important for predicting fire behaviour and may be useful in identifying the range of conditions or thresholds under which the arrangement of fuel components affects future fire behaviour.
We also performed a reciprocal transplant experiment to determine the effects of fire and litter type on the dynamics of litter colonization by arthropods.
However, we were surprised to find apparently synergistic impacts of rainfall and fire on litter arthropod populations.
If the main effect of fire on litter arthropods is a direct one, then we would expect to detect differences in arthropod populations between burned and unburned areas even if the amount and composition of litter available to invertebrates is held constant.
According to a forensic anthropologist at the University of Alabama, the fire area, littered with more than a thousand bones and shells, is consistent with campsites of western castaways who subsisted on anything that they could find to eat.
"It is up to the authorities to deal with deliberate fires of contained waste in wheelie bins and skips, but we all have a role to play to prevent fires involving litter and fly tipping by not creating it in the first place".
On the Monday, it's pissing down, the camera surveys the wrecked site: fires smolder, litter is piled sky-high.
Former residents of the warehouse have described it as a serious fire danger, littered with trash and old furniture and lacking fire sprinklers.
"We had to literally drive through smoke and fire, vehicles littered all over the sides of the road, and we had to drive as fast as we could and breathe as little as we could because the smoke was so intense and we could feel the heat from inside the vehicle," she said.
Effects of fire frequency on litter decomposition as mediated by changes to litter chemistry and soil environmental conditions.
