Fire and Australian Forestry – key papers published since 1975

Fire has always been part of Australian landscapes, and its management has long been the focus of public debate and independent review, especially following major bushfires. Such attention has only increased since the 2019/20 Black Summer bushfires (Davey and Sarre 2020), including through two national and five subnational public inquiries.

The many fire-related papers published in Australian Forestry over the years constitute a wealth of scientific knowledge that can contribute to debate and inform the current and future management of Australian landscapes, particularly forested landscapes.

The first such article to appear – in the journal’s very first edition – was by Wallace (1936), who explored an understanding of fire weather in south-western Australia. Galbraith (1939) published a summary of a conference held in the wake of the 1939 bushfires in Victoria. Considerably later, McArthur (1966) described the role of prescribed burning in fire control and management. Cheney (1968) discussed the construction and use of McArthur’s fire danger tables, which were employed for much of the second half of the twentieth century to predict fire behaviour in Australia.

Ryan and Turner (2009) and the Institute of Foresters of Australia (2009) published information and perspectives on matters related to the terms of reference of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission. The Institute updated its position in its submission to the recent national Royal Commission into Natural Disaster Arrangements, as published in Australian Forestry last year (Institute of Foresters of Australia and Australian Forest Growers 2020).

With the aim of making the large body of research and perspectives on forest fire contained in Australian Forestry more accessible, we are publishing a ‘virtual’ (or online) edition, thereby bringing together a selection of 24 fire-related papers that have appeared in the journal since 1975. The articles have been chosen to provide background and context to the much-needed debate taking place about fire in Australian landscapes. They provide important insights into the management and impacts of fire. Below, we briefly describe the featured papers using six themes: fire and the Australian environment; major bushfires; plantation fires; modelling fire behaviour; forest fuels; and fuel reduction burning. Readers of the hard-copy version of Australian Forestry can find the articles online by inserting the DOIs (given with the references) or titles into their search engines. The Appendix provided as part of this editorial comprises a complete list of 189 papers published in Australian Forestry since 1936 with direct relevance to fire management.

The virtual edition

Fire and the Australian environment

Gill (1975) reviewed the effects of fire and fire regimes on the Australian flora and its fire-adaptive traits and growth habits. Fire is an important variable in Australian environments, and its long-term effects on flora vary with fire intensity and frequency and the season in which the fire occurs. Gill’s paper provided a basis for understanding the relationship between fire and the Australian flora and thereby for using fire regimes as a management tool. Knowledge of species’ fire-adaptive traits can guide the use of fire in the management of ecosystems.

The impact of fire on soil nutrients increases with the intensity of fires, with effects highest in bushfires and intense slash-burning regimes. Harwood and Jackson (1975) estimated the loss of four nutrients after slash-burning fires in Tasmania and the consequences of such fires for soil-nutritional budgets. Leitch et al. (1983) reported erosion and nutrient loss following bushfire in the Victorian Central Highlands, affecting long-term soil fertility.

Christensen and Abbott (1989) reviewed the impacts of fire in eucalypt forest ecosystems in southern Western Australia, assessing the effects of prescribed fire, bushfires and the burning of logging residues on soils, nutrient cycling, flora, fauna and forest ecosystems. The review provided a basis for fire management in state forests and conservation parks and reserves and for forest management and planning in south-western Western Australia.

Jurskis (2005) discussed how ‘unnatural’ fire regimes and the exclusion of fire can result in the decline of eucalypt forest ecosystems. He presented contrasting arguments for how fire frequency and intensity affect such ecosystems and discussed what constitutes a natural fire regime in eucalypt forests and how natural fire regimes provide environmental stability. He contended that changed fire regimes in many eucalypt ecosystems have affected the ecological balance and caused declines in the health and predominance of eucalypts. The article provided important insights into how the alteration of natural fire regimes can affect ecological processes in eucalypt forest ecosystems.

Major bushfires

Cheney (1976) analysed bushfire disasters in Australia from 1945 to 1975, presenting a map of districts where large fires occurred every 3, 5, 10 and 20 years, and at intervals longer than 20 years. The map showed that, over the period, large fires occurred frequently in parts of the Northern Territory, south-western Western Australia, and south-eastern Australia and Tasmania. The paper provided insights into the spatial patterns of large fires, public attitudes, and fire management, as well as a basis for comparing the fire frequency of large fires that had occurred in Australia over a 30-year period.

Building on the discussion in Cheney (1968) on fire behaviour, Cheney et al. (2001) analysed three bushfire incidents where firefighters were trapped and killed and how the behaviour of the fires contributed to their deaths. The article helped shape work practices when combating bushfires to increase firefighter safety.

Wilson and Ferguson (1984) analysed the fight and flight strategies adopted by residents affected by a Victorian bushfire. The study evaluated the results of evacuation or staying and defending houses during bushfires in terms of house survival and personal safety. Kanowski et al. (2005) summarised the themes and lessons for bushfire mitigation and management arising from the 2002–2003 Australian bushfire inquiries.

McCarthy et al. (2012) analyses bushfire suppression strategies and the resourcing required for suppressing bushfires. They studied 42 fires and found that containment was related to slope, fuel hazard, fire size when detected and fire weather associated with fire behaviour.

Plantation fires

Keeves and Douglas (1983) discussed the impacts of the 1983 plantation fires on the south-eastern South Australian plantation estate and the approach required for the future management of this important resource. Gray and Pfitzner (1985) reviewed the operational implementation of the salvage-harvesting and storage of sawlogs from these burnt plantations.

Bartlett (2012) analysed the effects of two bushfires on the Stromlo plantations (Australian Capital Territory) and the urban interface in 2001 and 2003. The article provided an analysis of house losses and buffer widths near plantations and the effectiveness of prescribed burning in plantations.

Modelling fire behaviour

Gill and Zylstra (2005) reviewed fire flammability as it pertains to Australian forests. They analysed the scale and temporal aspects of flammability and how flammability modelling is incorporated into the prediction of fire rate of spread. They also discussed how climate change will affect flammability in the Australian environment.

McCaw et al. (2008) provided an insightful analysis of why fire models underpredict fire spread in summer in jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata Donn ex Sm.) forest in Western Australia. Cruz et al. (2015) reviewed empirically based models to predict the rate of fire spread in use in Australian vegetation systems, classed into broad fuel types (i.e. grassland, shrubland, native forest and pine plantation). They evaluated Australian fire models and their use in predicting fire behaviour under bushfire and prescribed-fire conditions and the application of these models to prescribed burning and the management of bushfires.

Forest fuels

Raison et al. (1983) analysed data on fuel dynamics in Australian eucalypt forest and undertook a review based on the fuel dynamics of forest types, the frequency and patterns of prescribed burning, fire impacts on forest ecology, and the likely severity of fire weather. The review provided important insights and research questions into managing fuels for long-term forest and fire management, with the authors concluding that significant public money should be made available for fire management in those parts of Australia where bushfires are a significant feature. Bridges (2004) discussed fine-fuel dynamics, analysed fuel accumulation rates in eucalypt forest communities and the effects of prescribed burning on fine fuels, and compared fuel accumulation rates between logging regeneration and wildfire regeneration situations. Hollis et al. (2011) studied the relationship between woody fuel consumption and fireline intensity and compared prescribed fire and wildfire. Hollis et al. (2015) discussed a framework for classifying fuel across the four broad fuel types used in Australian fire-behaviour models. Their bushfire fuel classification framework included a detailed definition and description of fuel in each fuel type, providing practitioners with information to support decision-making at multiple scales to determine fire risk and fire behaviour and manage fire effects. Ximenes et al. (2017) discussed the potential of mechanical fuel-load reduction for managing fuel loads and bushfire as an alternative to prescribed fire.

Fuel reduction burning

The management of fuel loads will be an important issue in managing forests and fire into the future. Morgan et al. (2020) provided a detailed review of issues surrounding prescribed burning in south-eastern Australia, concluding that there is compelling evidence for the greater use of prescribed burning to reduce wildfire risks and impacts, rather than committing increasing resources to wildfire suppression. Tolhurst and McCarthy (2016) analysed fire patterns in the 2003 Victorian bushfires at a landscape scale and how prescribed burns influenced fire severity and suppression. Hislop et al. (2020) analysed the effectiveness of fuel reduction at a landscape scale in reducing bushfire severity.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here

Appendix.

Fire-related literature in Australian Forestry (1939–2020)

Note: Data have been extracted from the database of digital holdings of Australian Forestry publications (1939–present day), accessed on 16 July 2021. The data include holdings published to July 2021. Updated versions of the file will be available at forestry.org.au under Forest Fire Management.