Page 2 - Temperate Forest News Today

Abstract Disturbance plays an important role in determining whether forests are carbon sinks or sources. Logging and wildfire are common widespread disturbances known to significantly reduce carbon stocks in carbon rich forests, such as, the tall forests of south-eastern Australia. Most tall forests in south-eastern Australia are dominated by globally unique resprouting Eucalypts that experience limited mortality after high severity wildfire. However, the most carbon dense forests in the region...

Abstract Extreme fire seasons characterised by very large mega-fires have demonstrably increased area burnt across forested regions globally. However, the effect of extreme fire seasons on fire severity, a measure of fire impacts on ecosystems, remains unclear. Very large wildfires burnt an unprecedented area of temperate forest, woodland and shrubland across south-eastern Australia in 2019/2020, providing an opportunity to examine the impact of extreme fires on fire severity patterns. We devel...

Abstract Our recent article on the comparative effects of logging and wildfire on carbon stocks in forests with contrasting responses to fire (Wilson et al., 2021) elicited a commentary from Jurskis (2021). While speculating widely about the nature of forests in our study and their management, Jurskis (2021) attempts to cast doubt on our finding that logging affected above ground carbon stocks. Our results showed that Eucalypt forests have substantially lower above ground carbon stocks in recen...