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.
Environment East Gippsland is suing the state government for a fourth time! We lodged the legal papers on Monday 22nd Sept 2014. The summer fires destroyed thousands of hectares of critically important habitat for East Gippsland’s threatened wildlife. This region is the stronghold for large forest owls yet DEPI refuses to urgently review the protection …
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 …
So why isn’t the Government accepting recommendation 5 of the Hazelwood Mine Fire Inquiry? Peter Ryan claims it’s just too difficult to get carbon monoxide monitoring equipment to a site within 24 hours. Yeah? How long does it take to drive a hand held CO monitoring device from Melbourne to Victoria’s far ends? 6-7 hours …
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 …
FOR three years the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission’s independent monitor Neil Comrie has strongly advised the Victorian Government to abandon one of the commission’s recommendations: the call to burn 390,000ha of public land annually for fuel reduction. Yet Environment Minister Ryan Smith is sticking to that target and, even more puzzling, DEPI plans to increase …
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 …
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 …
The 5% burn target has again been questioned by Neil Comrie himself “the 390,000 ha target may not be achievable, affordable or sustainable.” (from the latest BRCIM’s 2014 annual report). The Bushfire Royal Commission’s Implementation Monitor’s 2012 Final Report advocated that the State reconsider the planned burning rolling target of five per cent and replace …
Our new paper shows that the probability of crown fire in mountain forests under extreme weather conditions is greatest when trees are about 15 years old. This has implications for debates about how timber harvesting influences the risk of fire. Crown fire is a major driver of the dynamics of mountain ash forest, so changes …
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 …
