Bushfires
Bushfires have major impacts on social, economic, ecological and natural resource values. Effects of fire are complex and governed by fire regime components: i.e. frequency, intensity & season of fire. While short-term effects of individual fires are important, long-term impacts can only be evaluated by understanding effects of the fire regime on key values. Such an understanding can be used to quantify the risks posed by adverse fire regimes to particular values.
Fire regimes vary as a consequence of landscape, climatic and human factors, hence estimation of risk is complex. The way in which risk may vary as a function of each of these factors is poorly understood. Bushfire management typically seeks to, concurrently, reduce risks posed to multiple management values (i.e. biodiversity, people and property, air and water,) within fire-prone landscapes. However, techniques for quantifying risk to these diverse values over appropriate temporal and spatial scales are lacking. As a result, the effectiveness of various mitigation strategies (e.g. differing levels and combinations of prevention and suppression activities such as prescribed burning, manpower, aircraft and on-ground access to bushland) in reducing risks remain largely unquantified leading to unresolved and ongoing debate about appropriate bushfire management.
The prospect that climate will result in a greater incidence of weather conducive to large, intense fires heightens the necessity for studies that are focussed on the direct estimation of bushfire risk. The necessity for a risk-based approach to fire management is a key recommendation of the 2004 COAG Inquiry on Bushfire Mitigation and Management.
DECC and the University of Wollongong
Research is being undertaken by DECC and the University of Wollongong that will focus on the greater Sydney basin – a key region where climate change effects via bushfires may most acutely affect a wide range of values. Changes to fire in the future are an issue of very high significance in this region because extensive areas of highly fire-prone bushland:
- contain high biodiversity values (e.g. Blue Mountains World heritage status)
- abut extensive, areas of urban interface
- directly affect ecosystem services, such as the quantity and quality of water and clean air.
The challenge of resolving and balancing risks posed by bushfires and climate change to these values in the Sydney basin is the most significant in Australia. Specifically, the research project will:
- quantify changes in fire regimes at landscape scales resulting from predicted changes in climate
- quantify resultant changes in risks posed by adverse fire regimes to biodiversity, ecosystem functions, people and their property
- predict the sensitivity of bushfire risk to a range of mitigation strategies and the performance of these alternatives under climate change
- investigate trade-offs among risks to key management values that will be needed to adapt to climate change in the Sydney basin – where high value human assets, ecosystem services, and vulnerable and diverse ecosystems co-exist in fire–prone bushland
- report findings through scientific publications, project reports and workshops involving key stakeholder groups in government and the community.
For more information
Climate Change and Bushfire Risk - Prof Ross Bradstock (PDF 786kb). Presentation of research at the NSW Climate Impacts and Adaptation Summit, 23 February 2007: When do bushfires fires threaten people and property? How will “fire weather” change? How will bushfire fire incidence/area burned change? Changes in risks to people & property? Future management & other consequences?