Fire Frequency News Today

A study of Tianchi Lake sediments shows that warfare, rather than natural factors, became the primary driver of increased fire occurrences along the Silk Road over the past 2,000 years. Impact of War on Fire Frequency Along the Silk Road Human activities such as intentional burning, agriculture, p

Tree hollows are an important landscape resource used by fauna for shelter, nesting, and predator avoidance. In fire-prone landscapes, wildfire and climate may impact hollow dynamics; however, assessments of their concurrent impacts are rare. We conducted a field survey at 80 sites in the Sydney Basin bioregion (Australia) to understand how fire frequency, fire severity, mean annual temperature, and mean annual precipitation concurrently impacted the site-density of small- (<5 cm entry>wid...

The iconic Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis) is a critically endangered Australian conifer and one of the world’s rarest trees with only 46 mature individuals remaining in the wild. The species is regarded as a “living fossil” and was discovered on the brink of extinction following a natural historical decline. While its discovery has enabled crucial intervention for its long-term conservation, it has also created novel threats. Wollemia nobilis is facing extinction in the wild due to its hi...

Climate change is increasing the frequency, intensity, and size of fire events due to longer and more sustained droughts and heatwaves. The potential for regeneration of plants from seeds in fire-prone regions that will be impacted by climate change is due to (1) changes in the environmental conditions experienced by parent plants, seeds, and seedlings, and (2) changes in the fire regime. One of the clearest projections of the impacts of climate change is the switching of fire regimes away from ...

Wildfires are prevalent across Australian landscapes and their effects on plants are highly variable. Climate change has already caused an extensive fire season in 2019-20 in eastern Australia and frequency and intensity of fires is predicted to further increase into the future. These dynamic changes in the fire regime places plant species, even those with fire-adapted traits, at risk of population decline or extinction. A fundamental aspect of fire-plant relationships is understanding the plant...

Aim: Megafire events generate immediate concern for wildlife and human well-being, but their broader ecological impacts likely extend beyond individual species and single fire events. In the first mechanistic study of fire effects focussed on ecosystems, we aimed to assess the sensitivity and exposure of ecosystems to multiple fire-related threats, placing impacts in the context of changing fire regimes and their interactions with other threats. Location: Southern and eastern Australia. Time per...

Abstract Forests are vital for biodiversity, carbon storage and ecosystem services, but can be potentially threatened by fires. Given the significance of forests and fire in a changing climate, research into the long-term effects of fire on forests plays an important role in understanding the global carbon cycle by the forests functioning as a large terrestrial carbon sink or source. In this study, we used aerial photography from 1975 and 2013 to count the change in the number of trees in 560 d...