2001), when climate was 2 to 4°C warmer than present (Walker and Pellatt 2003). In the Willamette Valley and San Juan Islands, Garry oak savannahs are believed to have established more than 6,000 years BP (Boyd 1986; Weiser and Lepofsky 2009).

Despite the onset ~3,800 years ago of cooler, wetter conditions that favoured development of woodland Wnt inhibitor and closed forests in the Pacific Northwest of North America, oak savannahs have persisted to the present (Pellatt et al. 2001). Boyd (1986) notes that lightning-ignited fires do not occur frequently enough in the Willamette Valley to account for the continuation of oak savannah. He and others conclude that cultural burning is the most likely factor responsible for maintaining the savannah structure since 3800 BP that persists there today (Habeck 1961; Johannessen et al. 1971). In contrast to this view, Whitlock and Knox (2002) suggest that lightning played a more important role during the early- to mid-1800s than today, and that lightning and fire were common in the early autumn in the Willamette Valley oak savannah. In all likelihood the establishment of Garry oak ecosystems was the result of both climate and aboriginal landscape practices (Pellatt et al. 2001; Pellatt et al. 2007; Dunwiddie et al. 2011; McCune et al. 2013). Nonetheless, evidence

from Vancouver Island indicates that humans rather than lightning may have learn more been responsible for burning the landscape. From 2000 BP until the twenty-first century, cool, moist climate conditions prevailed and fire activity on southern Vancouver Island was generally low (Brown and Hebda 2002; Gavin et al. 2003). Despite these conditions, sites on southeastern Vancouver Island record an increase in fire activity during this period (Allen 1995; Brown and Hebda 2002; Gavin et al. 2003). Besides being in the rain shadow of the Olympic and Insular Mountain

ranges, broad scale climate conditions at southeastern SPTLC1 Vancouver Island were not appreciably different from the surrounding region. The difference in fire regime may therefore be partially attributable to cultural burning (Allen 1995; Brown 1998). Many researchers (Boyd 1986; Tveten and Fonda 1999), and accounts in historical journal materials (British Columbia Historical Society 1974; Dougan 1973; Duffus 2003; The Pioneer 1986) have concluded that aboriginal people used fire to manage food resources, most notably to increase yields of root vegetables (i.e., Camas), berries, seeds (Turner 1999), and forage species (Agee 1993; Turner 1999). Empirical evidence suggests that, on southeastern Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, this has been the case for millennia (MacDougall et al. 2004). The aboriginal population in the Salish Sea region of BC (Fig.