According to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change late last month, sequestering carbon dioxide is only one of the crucial climate-regulating attributes inherent to the world’s forests.
According to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change late last month, sequestering carbon dioxide is only one of the crucial climate-regulating attributes inherent to the world’s forests.
THE man charged with monitoring the state government’s response to the Black Saturday royal commission says a target to burn 5 per cent of Victoria’s public land every year to ease bushfire risk must be reconsidered. In his final report Bushfire Royal Commission Implementation Monitor Neil Comrie says the state’s burning program should instead focus …
This WA Report looks at how the disastrous Margaret River fires of 2011 got away and burnt 32 homes. It lists a series of findings and focuses heavily on WA’s Department of Environment and Conservation’s (DEC) poorly applied risk management practices and policies governing the undertaking of planned burns. The Report notes that the DEC …
During the 2009 bushfires, a huge log dump near Marysville was destroyed by fire. Michael Ryan from VicForests stated that 50,000 tonnes of pulpwood had been destroyed – around 10% of the total annual production of pulp logs for this area. The log dump was located near Marysville surrounded by tinder dry forest. Photographs of …
Losses to life and property from unplanned fires (wildfires) are forecast to increase because of population growth in peri-urban areas and climate change. In response, there have been moves to increase fuel reduction—clearing, prescribed burning, biomass removal and grazing—to afford greater protection to peri-urban communities in fire-prone regions. But how effective are these measures? Severe …
Park Protection Officer Phil Ingamells reports on the Fire and Biodiversity symposium, which was organised jointly by the Victorian National Parks Association and the Royal Society of Victoria and held on 24-25 October, 2011. Victoria is currently performing the largest ecological experiment ever carried out in the state. Over the past decade, more than three …
Before our forebears arrived with axes and chainsaws, the old growth forest full of 90mt tall giants covered 80% of the Central Highlands (north-east of Healesville). Now only 1% survives. The old-growth is almost gone and on the verge of being unrecoverable. One more bush fire could send it the way of the Thylacine, and …
Aboriginal Australians didn’t regularly use fire to manage the bush claims a new study, but experts aren’t convinced. TRADITIONAL THEORY SUGGESTS THAT Australian Aborigines have regularly burned-off the bush as a method to manage the landscape over the last 50,000 years. But an analysis of fossilised charcoal now contests that idea. The new research suggests that …
New research puts paid to the belief that Aboriginal people used fire on a large scale to control vegetation across Australia. The research team, who published their findings in the latest edition of the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, examined charcoal records dating back 70,000 years at 223 sites across Australasia. Lead researcher Dr Scott Mooney, …
The popular notion that Aborigines carried out widespread burning of the Australian landscape is a myth, research shows. A study of charcoal records has found that the arrival of the first Australians about 50,000 years ago did not result in significantly greater fire activity across the continent. An international team of scientists led by Scott …
Plans to burn the state’s public land at a rate of 5% a year is the biggest and most risky experiment ever carried out on our environment. Already it is destroying huge swathes of the Mallee and threatening its already fragile ecosystem and species. The VNPA and the Royal Society in late 2011 hosted a …
