Australia’s superb lyrebird clears litter and seedlings from the forest floor, reducing the likelihood and intensity of bushfires, new research suggests. The birds’ activity also preserves their preferred habitat of an open forest floor, says fire ecologist, Dr Steve Leonard of La Trobe University . “They’re reducing fuel by their foraging,” he says. “Our hypothesis …
There’s 4 times more carbon loss from logging than bushfires. This is from new research presented to the World Parks Congress in Sydney this week from ANU scientist Dr Heather Keith. “In a [logged] forest, the amount of carbon stored in the regrowth …, plus wood products and landfill, is about half that stored in …
In this 6th Age of Extinctions, the biosphere’s life-support systems that have allowed humans to ascend are collapsing. Visionary mycological researcher/inventor Paul Stamets illuminates how fungi, particularly mushrooms, offer uniquely powerful, practical solutions we can implement now to boost the biosphere’s immune system and equip us with benign breakthrough mycotechnologies to accelerate the transition to …
The tenth edition of WWF’s Living Planet Report, launched at the United Nations in Geneva, is a stark call to action for a world living beyond its means. The report reveals that humanity’s demand on the planet is more than 50 per cent greater than what nature can sustain, with dramatic declines in biodiversity since …
Abstract Context: The superb lyrebird Menura novaehollandiae is thought to be an important ecosystem engineer that, through its foraging, accelerates the decomposition of litter in Eucalyptus forests. Lyrebird foraging is therefore likely to affect forest fuel loads and hence fire behaviour in these fire-prone forests. In turn, fire is likely to reduce the abundance and …
Does logging affect the fire proneness of forests? This question often arises after major wildfires, but data suggest that answers differ substantially among different types of forest. Logging can alter key attributes of forests by changing microclimates, stand structure and species composition, fuel characteristics, the prevalence of ignition points, and patterns of landscape cover. These …
Victoria’s forest management policies need to be urgently reviewed in response to the discovery that logging can contribute to the severity of bushfires in wet forests, like the devastating fires on Black Saturday in February 2009. Our recent study, based on data from areas that burned on Black Saturday, clearly shows how extensive logging can …
This research paper from 2009 looks at a number of tipping points where we could see a point of no return for continents and the globe. Our planet’s biodiversity loss, climate change, ocean acidification, ozone damage and fresh water use are just some of the serious environmental threats these scientists look at. It is even …
A two-year landmark study of the deadly Black Saturday fires that killed 159 people shows conclusively that the intensity was significantly increased by clear-fell logging of forests. The study is dynamite and is published in Conservation Letters. Scientists from Melbourne University and the ANU (Professor David Lindenmayer, Dr Chris Taylor and Dr Michael McCarthy) say …
Logging practices can “greatly increase the severity of fires” in extreme weather conditions such as Black Saturday, Australian researchers have said. Researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) and Melbourne University examined hundreds of thousands of trees burnt in the 2009 bushfires in Victoria, which claimed the lives of 173 people on a day of …
