Page 2 - Fire Severity News Today

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...

Fire severity and frequency is predicted to increase in Australia’s temperate forests over the remainder of the 21st century. With Australia’s history of mass mammalian extinctions, and with 25% of arboreal mammal species currently listed as threatened Australia wide, developing a greater understanding on the effect of fire severity on mammals is essential for effective conservation management. Detectability of arboreal mammals from popular survey techniques such as spotlighting is typically...

‘Exceptional’ fire risk in much of England on Sunday when temperature is expected to top 35C for fourth day

As the UK hits a record temperature, experts have warned the country is unprepared for an increase in wildfire as climate change accelerates.

Aim: To estimate loss of above-ground carbon (AGC) and conversion of live carbon to dead carbon following understorey and canopy fire. Location: South-eastern Australia. Time period: 2019–2020. Major taxa studied: Four widespread resprouting eucalypt forests. Methods: Above-ground carbon was measured in 15 plots in each of four forest types one-year post-fire. We also assessed topkill, that is, trees subject to canopy loss that failed to resprout epicormically. Results: While canopy fire was a...

Forest fire size, frequency and severity are increasing worldwide, with corresponding reductions in long-unburnt habitat and greater modification of forest structure over wider areas. Understanding the implications for animals is imperative in optimizing management for species persistence and overall biodiversity. We investigated how avian responses to historical high-severity fire differ in forests at short (five years) and mid-range (16 years) time since fire, including whether increased time ...

Aim: The aims were: (1) to identify the environmental drivers of interannual variation in wildfire extent and severity; (2) to examine temporal trends in climatic potential for large and severe wildfires; and (3) to assess whether environmental conditions experienced during the 2019–2020 mega-fire season were anomalous. Location: South-eastern Australia. Time period: 1953–2020. Major taxa studied: Temperate forests. Methods: We used satellite-derived fire severity mapping from 1988 to 2020 t...

Background: Wildfire is known to reduce forest carbon stocks, but the influence of ante-cedent disturbance on wildfire related carbon stock losses is not as well understood. Disturbances such as logging and wildfire may increase the vulnerability of remaining carbon stocks to subsequent wildfire. Conversely, these disturbances may reduce the impact of subsequent wildfire, resulting in lower carbon stock losses. Methods: We measured above ground carbon stocks in pro-ductive resprouting Eucalypt d...

Fire seasonality (the time of year of fire occurrence) has important implications for a wide range of demographic processes in plants, including seedling recruitment. However, the underlying mechanisms of fire-driven recruitment of species with physiological seed dormancy remain poorly understood, limiting effective fire and conservation management, with insights hampered by common methodological practices and complex dormancy and germination requirements. We sought to identify the mechanisms th...

Accurate estimation of emissions from biomass burning and their impact on carbon storage requires pre and post-fire plot measurement of fuel consumption across a range of forest types and fire severities, and this information is currently far from comprehensive in Australia or elsewhere. We measured fine and coarse fuels in 44 sites before and after 20 fires including cultural burns, hazard reduction burns and wildfires in resprouting dry sclerophyll (eucalypt) forests in the Sydney region of Au...