PONE-D-20-25485

Traditional practices, knowledge and perceptions of fire use in a West African savanna parkland

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Amoako,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

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Patrice Savadogo, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

Overall, I think that this paper makes a valuable contribution to understanding traditional fire management practices, knowledge and perceptions in a West African savanna parkland. It is based on quantitative survey. I have some reservation on the organizational and statistical questions and analysis. A mixed-method approach [research which refers to the collection and analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data in a single study in which the data are collected concurrently or sequentially, are given priority, and involve integration of the data at one or more stages in the processes of research] could have been explored in addition to using other type of statistical analyse responding to the dichotomus nature of some of the response. If theses issues are solved the authors will need to rework on the entire sections of the manuscript.

See further in:

Creswell, J. W., V. L. Plano Clark, M. L. Gutmann, and W. E. Hanson. 2003. Advanced mixed methods research designs. In A.Tashakkori & C.Teddlie (Eds.), Handbook of mixed methods in social and behavioral research (pp. 209-240). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Further, the authors will need to conduct a thorough review on the existing litterature in the savanna region of West Africa on fire management in general. There are some important piece of research which could give further insight, yet no reference is made on that.

The reviewers have made valuable comments and I invite the authors to also take that into consideration during the revision.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: I Don't Know

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This paper called « Traditional practices, knowledge and perceptions of fire use in a West African savanna parkland » try to develop a work based on a quantitative survey about fires uses in Ghana. This work is well presented but it does not present original results on this topic. This paper appears as a monograph and not as a paper structured by a scientifical question with a key issue.

In details, references do not appears well used with confusion between works based in Africa, in tropics and sometimes in parklands. A lot of West African studies about fire uses are not given. Is there original characteristics for « West African savanna parkland » ? About the survey the random process used without clear justification do not allow a high quality to this survey about fire uses which is socially structured in those areas. In conclusion, a sentence is written : « There’s the need to study the ecological effects of traditional fire use » : yes we do agree but a state of the art is needed and this survey as presented here do not allow to give answers on this.

Reviewer #2: General Comments:

The ms tackles an interesting issue and a globally important one at the same time. Understanding traditional practices, knowledge and perceptions of fire use in Africa is very important for management purposes.

The reason, frequency and period of burning could help to mitigate and/or to manage bushfire in West African savanna.

The manuscript will benefit from a revision of the abstract, data analyses, and discussion sections. Most of the results show a district effect which is not discussed and not addressed in the abstract. The data analysis section is not clear, which tests are used to answer which questions? Research questions should be added at the end of the introduction for more clarity.

The number of district selected for the survey is representative (I guess) of the part that burns in Ghana and sufficient for statistical analysis, but the reasons for choosing these districts and communities are not clear.

The conclusion is too long, you have to keep the main results only.

Specific Comments:

- Most of the results (see below: lines 232, 242, 248, 253 …) show a district effect which is not dnot addressed in the abstract.

line 232: The was a significant association between the frequency of fire used for weed control and the district;

line 242 : Bush clearing around homesteads also showed strong association amongst the districts

line 248: Respondents’ use of fire to create firebreaks showed a strong significant association among the districts

line 253: Similarly, there was a significant association of fire use for hunting across the study districts.

- Line 24: add of after terms

- Line 3: add comma after thus

- Line 37: you could delete words in parenthesis and delete ‘has contributed to the transformation of landscapes over centuries and’, since you already talk about from line 30 to 31. Send the remaining part (Thus, the practice of fire use in traditional agriculture has been the source of food supply for both rural and urban economies of most countries of sub-Saharan Africa (Halstead 1987; Bassett, 1988; Holden 1993; Bassett et al. 2003)) at line 43 after (Rose Innes 1972; Archibald and Bond 2003; Dwomoh and Wimberly 2017).

- I'm not sure if it's a question of windows version but there are a lot of extra spaces in your manuscript: lines 70, 71, 72, 81, 101, 123, 124,135, 181, 188, 197, 202, 224, 225, 233, 267, …339,343, , 353, 355, …370, 371, 381, 386, 407, 427, 451, 460, 483, 486 ……..

- Line 75: Could you please add research questions here?

- From line 81 to 84: sentence too long, make the short sentences in your manuscript

- Line 88: what is the cropping season period? This period is important and have to be discuss in discussion part, since the majority of respondents indicated that they used fire for land preparation.

- Line 92: your study sites are in the northern part of Ghana? You have to precise it please.

- Line 92: the region experiences…Which region are you talking about here please?

- Line 100: how many district constitute the Northern region? Are all the districts in this northern part crossed by fire? This allows appreciating the representativeness of your study sites.

- Line 143 and figure 1: from 18 districts, why did you choose these six districts?

- Data analysis: because you did not precise research questions, it is difficult to understand which test you used to reply to which question. This part is not clear.

- There is a mistake somewhere. At line 197 you wrote “295 were from female and 237 were from male respondents women”, while in table 1 these numbers are reversed.

- Line 205: Delete 0 after 3

- Line 226: Did you applied chi-square test to reveal this association? You have to clarify in data analysis.

- Line 233: add space after Table 2.

- Line 246: the same activity, which activity please?

- Line 249 and 251: you wrote fire-break while elsewhere firebreak, used firebreak throughout the manuscript

- Line 272: I think “they controlled fire for land preparation” is not the best sentence, I suggest “they controlled fire used for land preparation” or the kind of sentence you used at line 288-290.

- Line 277: “never controlled fire used for weed control” rather than “never controlled fire for weed control”

- Line 280: add fire before districts

- Line 281: replace ‘the highest number (90%) of respondents” by “the majority of respondents (90%)

- Line 281: correct, not lowes

- Line 282: “districts never controlled fire used for burning stubble” rather than “districts never controlled fire for burning stubble”

- Line 297: Which statistical test shows this significant relationship?

- From 324 to 325: correlation test is performed between two quantitative variables, what is your variables for this correlation test here? Could you please show the table you used?

- Line 338: 4.1 rather than 4.2

- From 343 to 346: sentence too long

- Table 2: adjust the numbers in column 6 to the other rows of different columns.

- Line 365: you have to precise the main used of fire revealed by your study. Thus, when you will develop and explain the importance of the different used of fire it will be clearer.

- Line 368: replace hand –pulling by hand weeded

- Line 384: you could give the name of this district? Could you also explain why that used of fire is important in this district than in others districts? You have to discuss the difference between districts you mentioned in result section.

- Line 401: add comma after hence

- Line 402: Is it in all the districts that the population is more farmers than hunters?

- Line 403: add “.” At the end of the sentence

- From 397 à 412: Merge these 2 paragraphs in only one paragraph

- Line 404: In table 2, 55 and 43 respondents respectively in high and low fire frequency district used fire for hunting (important numbers compared to numbers relative to “never”), but you mentioned at line 401 “people would not indicate that they were involved in hunting”

And at line 404 “the low response rate for questions relative to hunting and charcoal”. I do not understand.

- Line 424 and 440: standardize the font of the titles…as at line 338 you did not used the same font.

- Line 444: add references after size.

- 485 add space after fire

- Line 509: no references in conclusion generally.

Reviewer #3: The statistical analysis was not as clear in the statements in the Discussion. Comparison to statements and Table values for use of burning for hunting was an example. The word usage was an interesting choice, perhaps differences in framing between Ghana spoken English vs. US English. There are minor but needed corrections to Font/text size, and punctuation. The figure/maps of study area need to be of better resolution/quality. Address more clearly Gender, men vs. women responses and how types of burning more more traditionally gender tasks/duties of domestic/village life and culture. Be consistent with et al. or listing all authors per Publication guidelines of journal. See yellow high lighted areas that need authors' attention/edits.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: Frank K. Lake

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PONE-D-20-25485R1Traditional practices, knowledge and perceptions of fire use in a West African savanna parklandPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Amoako,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Revised as per suggestions.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 07 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Randeep Singh

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #4: (No Response)

Reviewer #5: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #4: No

Reviewer #5: Partly

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #4: No

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #4: No

Reviewer #5: (No Response)

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #4: Plos One_D-20-25485R1

Traditional practices, knowledge and perceptions of fire use in a West African savanna parkland—Esther Amoako, James Gambiza

A potentially interesting and useful study addressing cultural fire management practices in culturally diverse agricultural and agroforestry settings of northern Ghana. However, I don’t think the current format and focus of the paper adequately nor usefully explores the assembled data and, from my reading of the ms, I think a total re-analysis and rewrite is required. I apologise in advance for this assessment but trust that the comments below may assist in developing a very useful, internationally relevant study.

First up, I don’t understand why you stratified your study sites in the Northern Region by fire hotspot frequency (as an index of fire activity) when a more logical approach would be to stratify firstly by major cultural grouping (e.g. Mangrusi, Dagomba, Gonja…), noting that 92% of your responses came from these three groups, in order to explore similarities / differences in cultural fire management practices. Are your hotspot frequency classes (high, medium, low) reflective of the cultural fire management activities of such cultural groupings, and/or population density generally, or some other factor(s)? Given that the title of your ms purports to describe traditional practices, knowledge(s) and perceptions…, reframing the focus of your analysis would seem to me to make much more sense. Such an approach would also presumably help tease out some intriguing findings in your results; for example, I found it interesting that very little ‘fire control’ is practised in association with hunting, nor the implementation of firebreaks (Table 3)—doesn’t this lead to major wildfire problems and associated significant socio-cultural-economic issues? Does this reflect traditional practice in all cultural groupings?

Taking such an approach would provide more useful cultural contrasts than your current use of data stratified by hotspot fire frequency as presented in Tables 2,3,4—and I confess I don’t know what Table 5 was attempting to convey. Note also:

• any analysis of hotspot frequency data should be presented in Results, not in Methods as currently

• you need to provide a copy of the questionnaire either as an appendix or in supplementary materials, including only those questions that you use for analysis of results

• Figures need to be revisited and better presented, noting that Fig 1 is included again as Fig 1A. Given comments above why not include a map of the 5 Chiefdoms, especially to highlight the three for which you have adequate survey data

Reviewer #5: I give some specific suggestions below, but overall I am concerned that the paper is somewhat rambling and lacking a focus. It appears that the premise of the paper is that there is some objective impact of the fire regimes on the environment and interviews were conducted to see how close the respondants perceptions matched that objective reality. This is implicit in the conclusion about the benefit of education and training (line 564). However the objective reality is not spelt out clearly and the line up against interview findings is laid out in a rambling hard-to-follow way. I would really like to see this relationship tightened up considerably. It is also possible, if not probable that the objective reality is actually a perception by a different group of people and may not be as real as implied. This needs to be addressed.

Line 84: The statement of objectives really doesn’t encapsulate the description of the survey questions described in line 178-192. Please rewrite.

Line 105: “a population of nearly 2.5 million people in xxx km2, representing…”

Line 133: Were the hired Fulani interviewed? What proportion of the population are they? What proportion of the work do they do? Do they perform the work of burning? Could it be that the landowners’ perceptions about fire are different from those of the people who actually do the burning if they are hired workers?

Line 169: “People were asked questions in their respective first languages on…”

Line 207: please replace “dialects” with “languages”. The word “dialects” has racist overtones as it is far more frequently used for people of colour than of white people for their native language. (to be clear in popular usage white people speak languages, black people speak dialects - this is a racist word usage even if people don't realise it)

Line 213: Full stop required after statistics.

Line 230: 21% is about one fifth. That is not a majority. “of six age groups, the largest was 26-32 years old”

Line 238: 70 persons per household to my understanding is a small village. Please explain your definition of a household. I doubt all 70 sleep under the same roof. Do you use this information on household size? If not maybe delete sentence as irrelevant.

Line 403: Although you are citing a paper with these temperatures, they are really meaningless in terms of describing fire behaviour. There spatial and temporal variations in fire behaviour between early and late season are such that ascribing temperature values is invalid. Maybe just say that late fires are of higher intensity than early fires.

Line 414: be good to point out that Striga is a parasitic plant that reduces crop yields.

Line 442 “respectively, that firebreaks were burnt to reduce fire risks…” This expression reduces wordiness.

Line 490: “occur”

Line 540: the statement “could have enormous impacts on the environment” is rather meaningless. The intention of controlled burning is to impact the environment through such processes as removing stubble, weeds, fire hazard around dwellings, and causing game to move. What are these “enormous impacts” and do they arise from a single event (e.g. death of rainforest trees, or decline in air quality) or as a result of the fire regime (e.g. soil degradation, shift in tree/grass balance). If they are the result of a regime, then maybe they are not enormous. Are there positive environmental impacts of fires?

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If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #4: No

Reviewer #5: No

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FIRE USE PRACTICES, KNOWLEGE AND PERCEPTIONS IN A WEST AFRICAN SAVANNA PARKLAND

PONE-D-20-25485R2

Dear Dr. Esther,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Randeep Singh

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: