Eco-cultural monitoring reveals low impact of a Dharug Dhiyina women-led Guwiyang (fire) in an urban National Park, Australia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Indigenous-led fire stewardship is increasingly recognised as important for ecological and cultural resilience; however, it remains rare in urban landscapes due to regulatory barriers, colonial fear of fire and risk aversion. This study aligned with the first Dharug dhiyina women-led guwiyang (fire) at Bidyiwung Badhu Nuru (Brown’s Waterhole, Lane Cove National Park) since European invasion of what is now called Sydney, some 230 years ago. Using a collaborative ecological and cultural (eco-cultural) monitoring approach, we evaluated Dharug dhiyina-defined ecological parameters before and after the guwiyang and at three control sites using a modified Before-After-Control-Impact ecological assessment. At each site, we monitored changes in fuel load, soil properties, culturally significant plants and mammal activities. The low-intensity, patchy guwiyang had a low flame height, a slow rate of spread, and significantly reduced fuel loads (surface and low-to-mid-storey). Following the guwiyang, we observed basal resprouting of the culturally significant edible and medicinal plant Dybung/Mambara (narrow-leaved geebung, Persoonia linearis). Consistent with Dharug dhiyina objectives, the low-intensity guwiyang reduced the short-term dominance of Daynya (common hop bush, Dodonaea triquetra) and Gurgi (bracken fern, Pteridium esculentum; soft bracken, Calochlaena dubia). Daynya showed minimal resprouting or germination, and Gurgi cover declined with low frond emergence after three months. After the guwiyang, we detected no change in soil properties or activity of Burraga (long-nosed bandicoot, Perameles nasuta) or Bagarayi (swamp wallaby, Wallabia bicolor). This study provided a rare analysis of the ecological outcomes of cultural burning in an urban bushland environment. Furthermore, we offer replicable methods for the cross-cultural collaborative design of monitoring approaches that can simultaneously serve eco-cultural goals.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".