Understanding fire conflict through stakeholder mapping in Madagascar's grassy Biomes

This dataset contains fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) data examining stakeholder perspectives on landscape fire drivers in Madagascar's Ambatofinandrahana district. The data were collected through 28 focus groups (n = 133 participants) conducted in April-May 2023 across five stakeholder groups: government officials, conservation practitioners, community leaders, rural farmers, and rural herders. Participants collectively identified variables influencing landscape fires and mapped causal relationships between them, assigning directional connections and strength ratings (1-4 scale).
The repository includes: (1) an aggregated stakeholder matrix consolidating all 28 focus group maps; (2) five stakeholder-level aggregated matrices used for hierarchical clustering analysis; (3) a consolidated variable list documenting how 200+ original variables were condensed into 36 analytical categories; (4) network metric summary tables for variables including Katz centrality scores, in-degree, out-deg..., , # Understanding fire conflict through stakeholder mapping in Madagascar's grassy Biomes

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.5mkkwh7jk](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.5mkkwh7jk)

## Data Description

### Research Context and Objectives

These data were collected as part of a participatory research effort to understand and compare stakeholder perspectives on landscape fire drivers in Madagascar's grassy biomes. Fire management in Madagascar represents a long-standing conflict between rural communities who use fire as a traditional land management tool and government and conservation authorities who view fire as environmentally destructive. Despite decades of fire suppression policies, tensions persist, and management approaches remain ineffective.

This research employed fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM)—a semi-quantitative participatory method—to systematically capture how different stakeholder groups perceive the causal relationships driving landscape fires in the Ambatofinandrahana district, centr..., All participants provided written or oral prior informed consent before participating in focus group discussions, in compliance with ethical approval from the University of Edinburgh School of GeoSciences' Research Ethics and Integrity Committee (approval #GEOS2022-585). Participants were informed that anonymised and aggregated data from the focus groups would be made publicly available to support scientific transparency and enable replication of research findings. Consent was recorded for all 133 participants across 28 focus groups conducted in April-May 2023.