Warmer and drier conditions have increased the potential for large and severe fire seasons across south‐eastern Australia

Collins, Luke; Clarke, Hamish; Clarke, Michael F.; McColl‐Gausden, Sarah C.; Nolan, Rachael H.; Penman, Trent D.; Bradstock, Ross A.; Varner, Morgan

doi:10.1111/geb.13514

Cited by 62 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…Pascolini‐Campbell et al (2022) identified the importance of terrain in driving fire severity in Southern California, with higher fire severity observed at high elevations and on steep slopes. In both south‐eastern Australia and the Western United States, the large burn areas of 2020 were largely consistent with long‐term trends of increasing fire size and warming and drying (Collins et al, 2022; Safford et al, 2022).…”

Section: What Is Driving Extreme Fire Seasons?supporting

confidence: 63%

Section: Changing Fire Regimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the Australian Black Summer, Brazilian Pantanal and western US fires, the large burn areas were found to be a function of extremely dry conditions (Collins et al, 2022; Coop et al, 2022; Ferreira Barbosa et al, 2022; Pascolini‐Campbell et al, 2022; Safford et al, 2022). Several studies also examined the drivers of fire severity, finding that fire weather and atmospheric aridity (vapour pressure deficit), and drought stress, were all important drivers of fire severity in south‐eastern Australia and the western United States (Collins et al, 2022; Pascolini‐Campbell et al, 2022; Safford et al, 2022). Pascolini‐Campbell et al (2022) identified the importance of terrain in driving fire severity in Southern California, with higher fire severity observed at high elevations and on steep slopes.…”

Section: What Is Driving Extreme Fire Seasons?mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Increasing threat of wildfires: the year 2020 in perspective: A Global Ecology and Biogeography special issue

Nolan

Anderson

Poulter

et al. 2022

Global Ecol Biogeogr

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Aim: Each year, wild and managed fires burn roughly 4 million km 2 [~400 million hectares (Mha)] of savanna, forest, grassland and agricultural ecosystems. Land use and climate change have altered fire regimes throughout the world, with a trend toward higher-severity fires found from Australia, the Americas, Europe and Asia, to the Arctic.In 2020, there were notable catastrophic fires in Australia (in the 2019/20 Austral fire season), the Western United States, South America and Siberia. These fires defined much of the global fire year and were compounded by the socio-economic disruption of the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Location: Global.Time period: 2020.Major taxa studied: Flora and fauna. Methods:The Global Ecology and Biogeography special issue, 'Increasing threat of wildfires: the year 2020 in perspective', includes 18 papers that catalogue these fire events, their drivers and their impacts on flora and fauna.Results: Collectively, these papers highlight the importance of fire response traits, exposure and sensitivity to interacting threats in determining fire impacts. Main conclusions:The scale of the 2020 megafires has helped identify new research areas required to more comprehensively assess fire impacts on biodiversity and biogeochemistry and to inform ecosystem management.

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Section: What Is Driving Extreme Fire Seasons?supporting

confidence: 63%

Section: Changing Fire Regimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: What Is Driving Extreme Fire Seasons?mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Increasing threat of wildfires: the year 2020 in perspective: A Global Ecology and Biogeography special issue

Nolan

Anderson

Poulter

et al. 2022

Global Ecol Biogeogr

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“…Annual area burned, the area burned by high severity fire and the size of high severity patches have increased across the eucalypt forest biome of south-eastern Australia over the past three decades, in response to worsening drought and fire weather (Tran et al 2020;Collins et al 2022). Very large wildfires (>100 000 ha) with large contiguous patches of high severity fire (>5000 ha) are becoming a more frequent component of fire regimes across this biome (Collins et al 2021a).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Large mixed-severity wildfires are common across the forests of south-eastern Australia (Collins et al 2021a), generally occurring in summer during periods of drought (Collins et al 2022). Prescribed burning is commonly applied in autumn for fuel hazard reduction, resulting in a fire regime consisting of both management burns and wildfires, with inter-fire intervals ranging from ~5 to >100 years (Murphy et al 2013).…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Fire severity has lasting effects on the distribution of arboreal mammals in a resprouting forest

et al. 2022

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Wildfire severity is assumed to be an important driver of habitat availability and species' distributions in forest ecosystems. Many studies have focused on the immediate or short‐term effects of fire severity in fire‐prone ecosystems, with much less focus on how long the effect of fire severity may persist. We examined the effect of fire severity on the distribution of arboreal mammals at 3 and 10 years post‐fire, in a temperate forest ecosystem dominated by eucalypts that have strong resistance and resilience to low and high severity fire, respectively. The study took place within areas affected by the 2009 Kilmore East‐Murrindindi wildfires in south‐eastern Australia. Sites were established across a gradient of fire severity (unburnt through to canopy consumption) and surveyed at 3 and 10 years following fire. Owing to low detection rates for many species, analyses were limited to greater glider (Petauroides volans) occurrence and arboreal species richness. At both 3 and 10 years post‐fire, the greater glider was restricted to unburnt forest or sites affected only by understorey fire, which acted as fire refugia. Greater gliders were absent from sites affected by high severity, canopy‐consuming fires at both points in time. Greater glider occurrence was associated with high levels of canopy cover (>50%), which were typically those areas that were unburnt or burnt at low severity. The richness of arboreal mammals increased over time and was greater in unburnt or minimally affected forest. Our findings emphasize: (i) that fire severity is an important driver of the distribution of arboreal mammals; and (ii) the importance of recognizing longer‐term effects of fire severity in assessing species distributions, even in highly resilient forest communities. Recent advances in mapping fire severity provide new opportunities to assess the effects of fire severity on the distributional patterns of fauna in eucalypt forests.

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What environmental and climatic factors influence multidecadal fire frequency?

et al. 2023

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Fire is a key ecosystem process with more than half the world's land surface potentially subject to fire. A key aspect of fire ecology is the fire regime, with fire frequency an important component. Fire frequency appears to be increasing in some ecosystems, but decreasing in others. Such temporal and spatial variability in fire frequency highlights the importance of more effectively quantifying spatiotemporal changes in fire frequency for particular environments. We modeled changes in fire frequency over the past 40 years (1981–2020) in a 4.64 million ha area in Victoria, Australia. We quantified regional variation in the number of fires (hereafter termed fire frequency) during two 20‐year time periods (1981–2000 vs. 2001–2020), employing the Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia (IBRA), a standardized regionalization of Australia's terrestrial landscapes. We also quantified the climate and environmental factors influencing fire frequency in each IBRA subregion. Our empirical analyses revealed that fire frequency in Victoria was heterogeneous in both time and space. Wildfire frequency changed between 1981 and 2020, with the past 20 years (2001–2020) experiencing a substantially greater number of fires relative to the 20 years prior (1981–2000). Changes in fire frequency were not spatially uniform, with increases more pronounced in some IBRA subregions than others. Climate and topographic factors influenced the frequency of wildfires, but their effects manifested differently in different IBRA subregions. For example, fire frequency was associated with increasing rainfall deficit deviation in four IBRA subregions, but an opposite trend characterized two others. Associations between fire frequency and increasing temperature deviation also varied from negative to positive across subregions. We also found evidence of elevation, slope, and aspect effects, but these too varied between IBRA subregions. The complex spatiotemporal changes in fire frequency quantified in this study, and the complex between‐region differences in the factors associated with the number of fires, have major implications for biodiversity conservation, resource availability (e.g., timber yields), and ecosystem integrity. In ecosystems subjected to repeated fires at short intervals, new rapid detection and swift suppression technologies may be required to reduce the risks of ecosystem collapse as high‐severity wildfires increase in frequency.

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Warmer and drier conditions have increased the potential for large and severe fire seasons across south‐eastern Australia

Cited by 62 publications

References 82 publications

Increasing threat of wildfires: the year 2020 in perspective: A Global Ecology and Biogeography special issue

Increasing threat of wildfires: the year 2020 in perspective: A Global Ecology and Biogeography special issue

Fire severity has lasting effects on the distribution of arboreal mammals in a resprouting forest

What environmental and climatic factors influence multidecadal fire frequency?

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