干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Firewood is a vital energy source for cooking and heating in traditional societies worldwide. During the past century, increasing human populations have depleted many previously available resources, resulting in severe shortages of firewood in many regions, especially in arid zones. Here, I describe the use as a source of firewood for a local semi-nomadic Bedouin village of several dozen families and the fate of a 0.3km(2) abandoned fiber-crop plantation of Agave sisalana Perr. which is more than 50years old in the Negev Desert, Israel. The amount of firewood extracted in the last decade equals several thousand local wild shrubs, which, in the current vegetation density, grow in a radius of several square kilometers. Harvesting the plantation for about 20years almost fully exploited the plantation. Because the Bedouins do not replant plants used only for firewood, this source is not sustainable despite its biological potential to be so. However, because Agave are CAM (Crassulacean acid metabolism) plants, they can grow under very arid conditions, and because they are well defended from grazing by thorns and poisons, they may be planted as a source of firewood in various arid regions where other plants will not sustain.