A failing anthropology of colonial failure: following a driver's uniform found at Amani research station,Tanzania

The remains of Amani, a century-old scientific laboratory in Tanzania, are quintessential modern relics. When anthropologists turn to such infrastructures of, originally colonial, knowledge-making, their own implication with the object of their study – and with its epistemological and political-economic origins and order – becomes part of the ethnographic pursuit. This entanglement between researcher and research material should challenge familiar realist modes of ethnographic writing ‘about’ such places that elude the anthropologists’ own, compromised position within them. Matters are complicated further when the studied knowledge-making sites already are broken, having failed their purpose – as in the case of the vestiges of an abandoned colonial institution. In this essay, I wonder how such ruins of knowledge-making might transform the knowledge made by anthropologists working within them. Instead of just adding ‘reflexive’ confessions to realist accounts, could writing take part in the defeat that the scientific station's remains seem to embody – writing not ‘after/beyond’ but ‘going along with’ failure? Drawing on non-representational ethnography, and poet-anthropologist Hubert Fichte's embrace of epistemic defeat as anticolonial method, I trace my engagements with just one fragment of the scientific station – a driver's uniform. In doing so, I experiment with an object ethnography that ‘fails’ to detach author and object, or settle the question of failure, and instead foregrounds performativity, ambiguity, and mirth as starting points for an ethnography of, and in, our modern ruins.     

On the double social life of failure

What might it mean to follow failure ‘out into the world’ (Alexander, introduction to this volume) in a way that is attentive both to its contingent and diffuse effects, and to the work involved in making it socially legible? This essay follows a moment of social breakdown, its reverberations in social life, and the forms of diagnosis it elicited as a way of exploring the double social life of failure. Focusing on the aftermath of Kyrgyzstan's 2010 ‘Osh events’ (Oshskie sobytiia) as they took hold in a multi-tenant and ethnically mixed dormitory apartment for migrant workers in Moscow, I follow failure forwards, exploring how a period of intercommunal violence reverberated in a context of protracted work migration, legal non-recognition, and the digital circulation of blame. I also track it backwards, attending to my interlocutors’ practices of diagnosis and excavation. Among Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in Moscow, the Osh events figured as indexical of different kinds of failure – whether of protection, recognition, or proper state care. I take vernacular diagnoses of bardak – normative breakdown – as an ethnographic entry point for thinking about the spatial and temporal afterlives of violence, their articulation in an age of digital mediation, and the ethics of naming and diagnosing failure.     

Modelling the left ventricle using rapid prototyping techniques

Biomechanical research of left ventricular function involves the assessment and understanding of both ventricular wall mechanics and deformation and intraventricular flow patterns, as well as how they interact. Experimental research using hydraulic bench models should therefore aim for an as realistic as possible simulation of both. In previous experimental investigations, wall deformation was studied by means of thin-walled passive experimental models, consisting of a silicone membrane in a closed box, which is squeezed passively by an externally connected piston pump. Although the pump function of these models has already been well established, the membrane deformation remains unpredictable and the effect of muscle contraction – and hence natural wall deformation – cannot be simulated. In this study, we propose a new design of an experimental hydraulic left ventricular model in which left ventricular wall deformation can be controlled. We built this model by a combination of rapid prototyping techniques and tested it to demonstrate its wall deformation and pump function. Our experiments show that circumferential and longitudinal contraction can be attained and that this model can generate fairly normal values of pressure and flow.     

Writing failure: knowledge production,temporalities, ethics,and traces

This volume follows failures out into the world, exploring how they unfold ethnographically. Taking a longer view shows how objects, narratives, and diagnoses of failures may be crafted, acted on, suffered, resisted – unmade or recomposed. Thus while tropes and diagnoses of failure can temporarily (re)organize, narrate, and stabilize the world, the kinds of failures explored here also indicate a mode of uncontainable excess that refuses the boundedness of knowledge objects, temporalities, and spaces. This volume offers three main interventions. The first concerns knowledge production: how objects of failure are crafted through selective ways of knowing that occlude both other modes of apprehension at different scales and failure's many affective valences. The second thinks through the knotted temporalities – whether pasts, futures, suspended presents, or repetition and sedimentation – that make and are made by failure. Finally, writing about unfurling failures requires careful attention to non-linear reverberations and traces as well as to open-ended and mobile narratives that produce different social and material effects.     

Annual burning of a tallgrass prairie inhibits C and N cycling in soil,increasing recalcitrant pyrogenic organic matter storage while reducing N availability

Grassland ecosystems store an estimated 30% of the world's total soil C and are frequently disturbed by wildfires or fire management. Aboveground litter decomposition is one of the main processes that form soil organic matter (SOM). However, during a fire biomass is removed or partially combusted and litter inputs to the soil are substituted with inputs of pyrogenic organic matter (py‐OM). Py‐OM accounts for a more recalcitrant plant input to SOM than fresh litter, and the historical frequency of burning may alter C and N retention of both fresh litter and py‐OM inputs to the soil. We compared the fate of these two forms of plant material by incubating ¹³C‐ and ¹⁵N‐labeled Andropogon gerardii litter and py‐OM at both an annually burned and an infrequently burned tallgrass prairie site for 11 months. We traced litter and py‐OM C and N into uncomplexed and organo‐mineral SOM fractions and CO₂ fluxes and determined how fire history affects the fate of these two forms of aboveground biomass. Evidence from CO₂ fluxes and SOM C:N ratios indicates that the litter was microbially transformed during decomposition while, besides an initial labile fraction, py‐OM added to SOM largely untransformed by soil microbes. Additionally, at the N‐limited annually burned site, litter N was tightly conserved. Together, these results demonstrate how, although py‐OM may contribute to C and N sequestration in the soil due to its resistance to microbial degradation, a long history of annual removal of fresh litter and input of py‐OM infers N limitation due to the inhibition of microbial decomposition of aboveground plant inputs to the soil. These results provide new insight into how fire may impact plant inputs to the soil, and the effects of py‐OM on SOM formation and ecosystem C and N cycling.     

Gravettian ivory ornaments in Central Europe,Moravia (Czech Republic)

In the sense of the gravettian technocomplex of Central Europe in Moravia it is mammoth ivory which was mainly used to manufacture and create personal ornaments. The hunters and gatherers selected and stored mammoth tusks as the raw material for the manufacture of tools, weapons, furniture and ornaments. In Moravia, personal ornaments were found in a great variability of forms and sizes – mostly beads like breast-shaped beads, bilobated beads, bilobated flat beads, tear drop shaped beads and round ornaments – rings, bracelets, discs as well as flat elements – diadems and other pendants (zoomorphs, antropomorphs, geometric forms). Some types of personal ornaments show equivalent forms at other gravettian sites and some are unique in Moravia. This article illustrates the variability of these personal ornaments in the context of the Gravettian in Moravia.     

Landscape-Scale Simulation of Heterogeneous Fire Effects on Pyrogenic Carbon Emissions,Tree Mortality,and Net Ecosystem Production

Fire influences carbon dynamics from local to global scales, but many uncertainties remain regarding the remote detection and simulation of heterogeneous fire effects. This study integrates Landsat-based remote sensing and Biome-BGC process modeling to simulate the effects of high-, moderate-, and low-severity fire on pyrogenic emissions, tree mortality, and net ecosystem production. The simulation area (244,600 ha) encompasses four fires that burned approximately 50,000 ha in 2002–2003 across the Metolius Watershed, Oregon, USA, as well as in situ measurements of postfire carbon pools and fluxes that we use for model evaluation. Simulated total pyrogenic emissions were 0.732 Tg C (2.4% of equivalent statewide anthropogenic carbon emissions over the same 2-year period). The simulated total carbon transfer due to tree mortality was fourfold higher than pyrogenic carbon emissions, but dead wood decomposition will occur over decades. Immediately postfire, burned areas were a simulated carbon source (net C exchange: −0.076 Tg C y⁻¹; mean ± SD: −142 ± 121 g C m⁻² y⁻¹). As expected, high-severity, stand-replacement fire had disproportionate carbon impacts. The per-unit area effects of moderate-severity fire were substantial, however, and the extent of low-severity fire merits its inclusion in landscape-scale analyses. These results demonstrate the potential to reduce uncertainties in landscape to regional carbon budgets by leveraging Landsat-based fire products that account for both stand-replacement and partial disturbance.     

Ghar ki tension: domesticity and distress in India's aspiring middle class

Tension is a polysemic term used across South Asia to describe the strains and scrapes of life, like ‘worry’ or ‘stress’ in Euro-American discourse. Yet in the formerly agro-pastoralist and upwardly mobile Gaddi community of Himalayan India, it is used by women with the qualifying ghar ki – ‘household’ – to indicate a deeper disruption to bodily humours, intimate relations, and household materiality. This article takes ghar ki tension, with a particular focus on the layered qualifier ghar, as a window into the precarity of middle-class domestic life as it is experienced in the bodies of the women who pursue it. Rather than focusing on the communicative functions of women's distress within the household, this article looks to the relational, affective, and material ways in which women see their bodies and houses as mutually constituted and disrupted. This approach reveals how women's domestic labour is both a source of dignity and a burden. This burden is experienced in ghar ki tension, in bodily symptoms of overheating, and visits from supernatural beings. This article suggests that ghar ki tension might offer a novel way of looking at distress as the psychic and embodied cost of upward social mobility beyond the Gaddi context.     

Managing invasions at the cost of native habitat? An experimental test of the impact of fire on the invasion of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Chromolaena odorata</Emphasis> in a South African savanna

Successfully managing invasive plants in natural systems is extremely difficult. Recently however, progress has been made with an approach focused on changing ecosystem processes through the disturbance regime. We performed a large-scale (3 ha) full-factorial field experiment in densely invaded woodland in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park, a savanna reserve in South Africa, to study the effect of fire on the control of the pan-tropical invasive exotic shrub Chromolaena odorata in combination with the conventional method, i.e. manual clearing and herbicide application. We show how fire interacted with the conventional clearing of C. odorata and induced an intense canopy fire that caused a shift from woodland to grassland. After 2.5 years of monitoring, grasses were still dominant and re-invasion minimal. It is important to note that fire without prior clearing did not have the same effect and was not successful in reducing densities of C. odorata. An integrated control practice targeting the species with mechanical and chemical methods, while simultaneously targeting its habitat through fire, effectively controlled dense C. odorata thickets during the course of the experiment. However, this approach transformed regular surface fires into high-intensity canopy fires that are rare in savannas. We discuss how this altered fire regime may threaten native habitats, including fire-sensitive forest patches and riverine woodlands within the savanna mozaic. This is an important dilemma for managers that should not be overlooked and asks for long-term data on the impact of control programs on the native vegetation.     

Quantifying the direct fire threat to a critically endangered arboreal marsupial using biophysical,mechanistic modelling

Historically unprecedented areas of forest habitat have been impacted by fire, as climate change and other anthropogenic disturbances drive increases in fire burned area and severity. Although 88% of Australia's [threatened] land mammals are threatened by inappropriate fire regimes, calculations of animal mortality resulting from specific events have been impeded by knowledge gaps relating to both the direct (first-order) and long-term (second-order) effects of fire on different species. This study addresses the need for a quantified, mechanistic understanding of first-order effects, presenting an extension of the Fire Research and Modelling Environment (FRaME) to allow prediction of species-specific mortality. FRaME is demonstrated and tested here by replicating an incident in which a prescribed burn caused 77% mortality of a population of the critically endangered ngwayir (Pseudocheirus occidentalis, Pseudocheiridae). FRaME correctly predicted heavy mortality (62–79%) arising from partial and full-thickness burns and asphyxiation due to burns in the respiratory tract. Mortality varied with animal fire-avoidance strategies (p < 0.001) and the thickness of tree hollow walls (r = −0.95, p < 0.001). Although management guidelines specified low intensity fire, mortality had no significant relationship with Byram intensity and larger flames due to ‘torching’ were most frequent when fire spread was slowest. FRaME modelling predicted that individuals would be impacted by temperatures exceeding 500°C for several minutes. Fire management that is premised on discredited notions of fire behaviour and overly simple models can lead to catastrophic management outcomes such as those documented here. FRaME addresses this need by providing a platform to account for heterogeneous fire behaviour as well as animal behaviour and habitat quality, calculating fire risk to fauna and guiding management that maximizes safe habitat.     

Evolutionary history of fire‐stimulated resprouting,flowering, seed release and germination

Fire has shaped the evolution of many plant traits in fire‐prone environments: fire‐resistant tissues with heat‐insulated meristems, post‐fire resprouting or fire‐killed but regenerating from stored seeds, fire‐stimulated flowering, release of on‐plant‐stored seeds, and germination of soil‐stored seeds. Flowering, seed release and germination fit into three categories of response to intensifying fire: fire not required, weakly fire‐adapted or strongly fire‐adapted. Resprouting also has three categories but survival is always reduced by increasing fire intensity. We collated 286 records for 20 angiosperm and two gymnosperm families and 50 trait assignments to dated phylogenies. We placed these into three fire‐adapted trait types: those associated with the origin of their clade and the onset of fire‐proneness [primary diversification, contributing 20% of speciation events over the last 120 million years (My)], those originating much later coincident with a change in the fire regime (secondary diversification, 30%), and those conserved in the daughter lineage as already adapted to the fire regime (stabilisation, 50%). All four fire‐response types could be traced to >100 My ago (Mya) with pyrogenic flowering slightly younger because of its dependence on resprouting. There was no evidence that resprouting was always an older trait than either seed storage or non‐sprouting throughout this period, with either/both ancestral or derived in different clades and times. Fire‐adapted traits evolved slowly in the Cretaceous, 120–65 Mya, and rapidly but fitfully in the Cenozoic, 65–0 Mya, peaking over the last 20 My. The four trait‐types climaxed at different times, with the peak in resprouter speciation over the last 5 My attributable to fluctuating growing conditions and increasing savanna grasslands unsuitable for non‐sprouters. All experienced a trough in the 40–30‐Mya period following a reduction in world temperatures and oxygen levels and expected reduced fire activity. Thick bark and serotiny arose in the Mid‐Cretaceous among extant Pinaceae. Heat‐stimulated germination of hard seeds is ancestral in the 103‐My‐old Fabales. Smoke‐(karrikin)‐stimulated germination of non‐hard seeds is even older, and includes the 101‐My‐old Restionaceae–Anarthriaceae. A smoke/karrikin response is detectable in some fire‐free lineages that prove to have a fire‐prone ancestry. Among clades that are predominantly fire‐prone, absence of fire‐related traits is the advanced condition, associated either with increased fire frequency (loss of serotiny and soil storage), or migration to fire‐free habitats (loss of thick bark, pyrogenic flowering, serotiny or soil storage). Protea (Africa) and Hakea (Australia) illustrate the importance of stabilisation processes between resprouting/non‐sprouting in accounting for speciation events over the last 20 My and highlight the frequent interchange possible between these two traits. Apart from Pinus, most ancestral trait reconstruction relative to fire has been conducted on predominantly Southern Hemisphere clades and this needs to be redressed. Despite these limitations, it is clear that fire has had a profound effect on fire‐related trait evolution worldwide, and set the platform for subsequent evolution of many non‐fire‐related traits. Genetics of the triggering mechanisms remain poorly understood, except the karrikin system for smoke‐stimulated germination. We exhort biologists to include fire‐proneness and fire‐related traits in their thinking on possible factors controlling the evolution of plants.     

The effects of fire on wetland structure and functioning

Fire is an extensively used wetland management tool in both tropical and temperate areas, but its effects on wetlands are not well understood. The purpose of this paper is to review the effects of fire on wetland hydrology, biogeochemical cycling and vegetation composition, including primary effects that take place during the fire such as combustion of plant material, loss of volatile substances to the atmosphere and deposition of ash on the soil surface, and secondary effects such as alteration of soil pH as a result of ash deposition, exposure of the soil surface to solar radiation, and increased availability of nutrients. Several of the secondary effects are most dramatic immediately after a fire, but become progressively modulated by newly stimulated vegetation growth. The findings suggest that the effects of fire depend upon a wetland's characteristics, including its climatic and hydrological context, as well as upon interactions with other disturbances such as grazing. Thus, similar fire regimes may have dramatically different outcomes. Where knowledge gaps were identified, some general predictions are offered, drawing from comparable ecosystems such as mesic grasslands. These predictions provide potential hypotheses for further research.     

Quantifying disturbance resistance in an ecologically dominant species: a robust design analysis

Disturbance is now recognized as a key ecosystem process but few studies have examined its indirect effects on individuals in a population or its relationship to ecological dominance in a community. Using an ecologically dominant small mammal population in experimentally burned habitat as a model, I empirically tested the effect of disturbance on survival, abundance and fecundity and investigated whether recently burned habitat is a population sink. I also examined the effect of fire on community diversity, particularly how fire influenced dominance by bushveld gerbils Tatera leucogaster (Peters 1852). Live trapping in the first year post-fire yielded a total of 4,774 captures of 1,076 individual bushveld gerbils in a tropical savanna in southern Africa. The robust design allowed for an investigation of the effects of fire, sex and temporal variation on survival while controlling for potential differences in detection and temporary emigration. Although there were fewer individuals in burned savanna during the first 6 months post-fire, their apparent monthly survival was not significantly lowered compared with the control, with males and females surviving equally well. Fecundity, represented by proportion of females lactating, was unaffected by fire and, overall, recently burned habitat does not appear to be sink habitat. The disturbance resistance exhibited by this species is likely a contributing factor to its ecological dominance in the area, which is subject to relatively frequent fires. Results of this study highlight the need to consider disturbance regimes when evaluating patterns of species richness and evenness in an ecosystem.     

Ectomycorrhiza succession patterns in Pinus sylvestris forests after stand-replacing fire in the Central Alps

Fires shape fundamental properties of many forest ecosystems and climate change will increase their relevance in regions where fires occur infrequently today. In ecosystems that are not adapted to fire, post-fire tree recruitment is often sparse, a fact that might be attributed to a transient lack of mycorrhizae. Ectomycorrhizal (EcM) fungi play an important role for recruitment by enhancing nutrient and water uptake of their hosts. The questions arise whether and for how long the EcM community is transformed by fire. We investigated the resistance and resilience of EcM fungal communities on a chronosequence of 12 Pinus sylvestris stands in Valais (Switzerland) and Val d’Aosta (Italy) affected by fire between 1990 and 2006. Soil samples from burnt and non-burnt forests were analyzed with respect to EcM fungi by means of a bioassay. The number of EcM species was significantly lower in samples from recently (2–5 years) burnt sites than non-burnt forest, and increased with time since fire reaching levels of adjacent forests after 15–18 years. Community composition changed after fire but did not converge to that of non-burnt sites over the 18 year period. Only Rhizopogon roseolus and Cenococcum geophilum were abundant in both burnt sites and adjacent forest. Our data indicate fire resistance of some EcM fungal species as well as rapid resilience in terms of species number, but not in species composition. As long as the function of different EcM species for seedling establishment is unknown, the consequences of long-term shifts in EcM community composition for tree recruitment remain unclear.     

‘Failure in the air’: activist narratives,in-group story-telling,and keeping political possibility alive in Lebanon

Failure is often taken as an endpoint: anathema to political organizing and the death knell of social movements. To the degree that radical movements themselves dwell on failure, participants often consider the focus pathological. This article explores how, in the aftermath of the falling apart of long-term initiatives, Lebanese political activists were able to maintain their capacity to engage in transformative action. At a time when activists felt ‘failure in the air’, narrating prior political experiences communally, in formal and informal contexts, became crucial to (re)imagining one another as activists. Such stories narrated failure to compel collective action in the future, making failure itself a political resource; not the end, but a beginning. Throughout, this article engages in an affirmative anthropology that keeps alive the costs of failure even as it shows how radical political actors generate their capacity to act and their potential to imagine otherwise.     

Frequent fires do not affect sexual expression and reproduction in Vachellia caven

In environments with high fire frequency the impoverishment of abiotic resources may favour male sexual expression in plants as it is less costly than female expression. Also, fire can modify pollinator communities and thus affect plant reproduction. Here we evaluate the effect of frequent fires on sexual expression, pollination and reproductive success of Vachellia caven (Leguminosae), an andromonoecious tree that is highly dependent on animal pollination and is abundant in burned sites. We expect that increased fire frequency will favour maleness but it will decrease reproductive success due to abiotic resource depletion in repeated burned sites. To test this, we selected focal plants in three unburned sites and three frequently burned sites and measured their sexual expression, basal diameter, pollination and fruit set. The proportion of male inflorescences per plant was not affected by fire and it was negatively related with the diameter of the plant. The proportion of pollinated flowers was not affected by fire, and fruit set increased with maleness only in frequently burned sites. These results indicate that V. caven is adapted to regimes of high fire frequency: not only was there similar fruit set in both burned and unburned sites, but more male plants had higher fruit set in burned sites. Despite the soil impoverishment triggered by repeated fires, V. caven is able to maintain its sexual and reproductive functions, allowing it to persist and maintain viable populations in fire‐prone environments. Abstract in Spanish is available with online material.     

Embracing precarity across species: Muslim ethics and care for stray dogs in Russia

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Saint Petersburg between 2015 and 2016, this article puts work on postsocialist precarity in conversation with scholarship on piety and interspecies care in Muslim contexts to explore how Aliya, a low-income Slavic convert to Islam, responded to social and economic hardships by tending to stray dogs. In doing so, she did not turn away, turn inwards, or turn political in the conventional sense of the word. Instead, she engaged in what I term ‘embracing precarity’, which I define as a response to uncertainty, grounded in Islamic spirituality, ethics, and care. By embracing canine tactility – often in departure from cultural norms concerning stray dogs in Islam and at the risk of deepening her own vulnerability – Aliya embarked on a path towards God with nonhuman others. The emergent relatedness between her and the dogs illustrates how striving for an ethical Muslim life amid uncertainty may open one up to experimentation, improvisation, and becoming with precarious others in a pursuit of a relationship with God and a favourable afterlife.     

Climate change, human land use and future fires in the Amazon

There is increasing consensus that the global climate will continue to warm over the next century. The biodiversity-rich Amazon forest is a region of growing concern because many global climate model (GCM) scenarios of climate change forecast reduced precipitation and, in some cases, coupled vegetation models predict dieback of the forest. To date, fires have generally been spatially co-located with road networks and associated human land use because almost all fires in this region are anthropogenic in origin. Climate change, if severe enough, could alter this situation, potentially changing the fire regime to one of increased fire frequency and severity for vast portions of the Amazon forest. High moisture contents and dense canopies have historically made Amazonian forests extremely resistant to fire spread. Climate will affect the fire situation in the Amazon directly, through changes in temperature and precipitation, and indirectly, through climate-forced changes in vegetation composition and structure. The frequency of drought will be a prime determinant of both how often forest fires occur and how extensive they become. Fire risk management needs to take into account landscape configuration, land cover types and forest disturbance history as well as climate and weather. Maintaining large blocks of unsettled forest is critical for managing landscape level fire in the Amazon. The Amazon has resisted previous climate changes and should adapt to future climates as well if landscapes can be managed to maintain natural fire regimes in the majority of forest remnants.     

Sampling grain influences trends in vegetation composition and diversity with time since fire in Australian heathland

Scale‐dependency of pattern and process is well‐understood for many ecological communities; however, the influence of spatial scale (sampling grain) in detecting temporal change in communities is less well‐understood. The temperate lowland heathlands of south‐east Australia are one of the most fire‐prone ecosystems on earth. Despite the extensive literature documenting the effect of time since fire on heathlands, we know little about how sampling grain influences trends in vegetation variables over time, and whether these trends are scale‐dependent. Using 3500 ha of heathland in the Gippsland Lakes Coastal Park, south‐east Australia, we investigated how above‐ground species composition and diversity, and trends in these variables with increasing time since fire, were influenced by sampling grain (1 m², 10 m², 100 m², 900 m², 1 ha, 4 ha). Sampling grain influenced patterns detected in vegetation variables and in some instances, significantly affected their relationship with time since fire. Richness decreased with time since fire, with mean richness decreasing at three of the four grains, while total richness decreased at half of the sampled grains. Evenness (J) decreased with increasing time since fire for all grains except 1 m². The decline in diversity (H) with time since fire appeared to be independent of scale, as all grains decreased significantly with increasing time since fire. Community heterogeneity demonstrated a weak response to time since fire across most grains. Changes in composition among young (0–6 years since fire), intermediate (9–19 years) and old (23–27 years) sites were dependent on sampling grain, with all grains exhibiting significant differences in composition, apart from the 1 m² grain and the 100 m² grain (presence/absence data). Overall, species composition, richness, evenness, diversity and community heterogeneity were dependent on the scale at which the vegetation was sampled. In addition, trends in many of these vegetation variables with increasing time since fire were scale‐dependent. This work provides strong evidence that sampling at multiple grains contributes substantially to understanding pattern and process in heathlands.