A tale of two parks: contemporary fire regimes of Litchfield and Nitmiluk National Parks, monsoonal northern Australia

Edwards, Andrew C.; Hauser, Philip M.; Anderson, M. Kat; McCartney, Jay; Armstrong, M.; Thackway, Richard; Allan, Grant; Hempel, Craig; Russell‐Smith, Jeremy

doi:10.1071/wf01002

Cited by 68 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…[60] found higher APAB in Litchfield National Park (56%) and Nitmiluk National Park (41%), in northern Australia. On the other hand, [61] found lower APAB in Kakadu National Park, an area adjacent to WAL, with values ranging from 21% to 27% in sandstone habitats.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Modelling Fire Frequency in a Cerrado Savanna Protected Area

et al. 2014

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Covering almost a quarter of Brazil, the Cerrado is the world’s most biologically rich tropical savanna. Fire is an integral part of the Cerrado but current land use and agricultural practices have been changing fire regimes, with undesirable consequences for the preservation of biodiversity. In this study, fire frequency and fire return intervals were modelled over a 12-year time series (1997–2008) for the Jalapão State Park, a protected area in the north of the Cerrado, based on burned area maps derived from Landsat imagery. Burned areas were classified using object based image analysis. Fire data were modelled with the discrete lognormal model and the estimated parameters were used to calculate fire interval, fire survival and hazard of burning distributions, for seven major land cover types. Over the study period, an area equivalent to four times the size of Jalapão State Park burned and the mean annual area burned was 34%. Median fire intervals were generally short, ranging from three to six years. Shrub savannas had the shortest fire intervals, and dense woodlands the longest. Because fires in the Cerrado are strongly responsive to fuel age in the first three to four years following a fire, early dry season patch mosaic burning may be used to reduce the extent of area burned and the severity of fire effects.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Modelling Fire Frequency in a Cerrado Savanna Protected Area

et al. 2014

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“…It is also probably not particularly significant at the continental-scale addressed here given that wet season fires, typically ignited by lightning strike, tend to be small; however, in some regions, and in certain years, large fires do run in the wet season, particularly in more inland regions (e.g. Edwards et al 2001;Allan and Southgate 2002). Such fires also complicate the development of regional fire histories, whether they are mapped at LANDSAT or finer imagery scales.…”

Section: Qualifications On the Fire Mapping Datamentioning

confidence: 91%

Contemporary fire regimes of northern Australia, 1997 - 2001: change since Aboriginal occupancy, challenges for sustainable management

Russell‐Smith

Yates

Edwards

et al. 2003

Int. J. Wildland Fire

253

160

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Considerable research has been undertaken over the past two decades to apply remote sensing to the study of fire regimes across the savannas of northern Australia. This work has focused on two spatial scales of imagery resolution: coarse-resolution NOAA-AVHRR imagery for savanna-wide assessments both of the daily distribution of fires ('hot spots'), and cumulative mapping of burnt areas ('fire-scars') over the annual cycle; and fine-resolution Landsat imagery for undertaking detailed assessments of regional fire regimes. Importantly, substantial effort has been given to the validation of fire mapping products at both scales of resolution. At the savanna-wide scale, fire mapping activities have established that: (1) contrary to recent perception, from a national perspective the great majority of burning in any one year typically occurs in the tropical savannas; (2) the distribution of burning across the savannas is very uneven, occurring mostly in sparsely settled, higher rainfall, northern coastal and subcoastal regions (north-west Kimberley, Top End of the Northern Territory, around the Gulf of Carpentaria) across a variety of major land uses (pastoral, conservation, indigenous); whereas (3) limited burning is undertaken in regions with productive soils supporting more intensive pastoral management, particularly in Queensland; and (4) on a seasonal basis, most burning occurs in the latter half of the dry season, typically as uncontrolled wildfire. Decadal fine-resolution fire histories have also been assembled from multi-scene Landsat imagery for a number of fire-prone large properties (e.g. Kakadu and Nitmiluk National Parks) and local regions (e.g. Sturt Plateau and Victoria River District, Northern Territory). These studies have facilitated more refined description of various fire regime parameters (fire extent, seasonality, frequency, interval, patchiness) and, as dealt with elsewhere in this special issue, associated ecological assessments. This paper focuses firstly on the patterning of contemporary fire regimes across the savanna landscapes of northern Australia, and then addresses the implications of these data for our understanding of changes in fire regime since Aboriginal occupancy, and implications of contemporary patterns on biodiversity and emerging greenhouse issues.

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“…The main reasons for the annual fires correlated with anthropogenic land use and other activities, and most fires were in dry periods (JuneAugust) (Danthu et al, 2003;Laris, 2002;Mbow et al, 2000;Reid et al, 2000;Sheuyange et al, 2005;Snyman, 2004). In Australia, vast tracts of savanna are burnt annually over the dry season (May-November), under relatively severe climatic conditions; these fires are mostly caused by human activities for a variety of pastoral, indigenous (Aboriginal), and conservation management purposes (Edwards et al, 2001;Gill et al 1996;Haynes 1985;Lewis 1989;Press 1988). Arid and semi-arid grasslands cover Mongolia and Inner Mongolia of China and comprise a major part of Asian grasslands.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%