What is the science behind increased hazard reduction burns?

[awildland]

I question why we need artificial fires in the Australian bush anyway. It's certainly true that the life cycle of many Australian plant species depends on natural fires from lightning strikes but to keep regularly burning the bush like Aborigines did just because they were "fire farmers" surely does not lead to a "natural" state of the bush either.

And people should not live in fire-prone areas without appropriate clearing around buildings, sprinklers and fire-resistant buildings.

The argument is that aborigines have been pattern burning the landscape for so long, that many surviving plant and animal communities have come to depend on it. The 'natural state' is no longer desirable. If this is correct, by abandoning aboriginal fire management techniques we have reduced diversity at the landscape level, and many species now find survival difficult. The risk of wildfire also increases.

Thanks to Gammage, the subject should keep ecologists and land managers busy for the next decade or so.

Cheers

Have to agree maddog, Gammage's book is a fascinating read and must inspire some new and interesting research and thinking. I certainly don't look at the "wilderness" areas that we visit in quite the same way anymore.

[stepbystep]

I question why we need artificial fires in the Australian bush anyway. It's certainly true that the life cycle of many Australian plant species depends on natural fires from lightning strikes but to keep regularly burning the bush like Aborigines did just because they were "fire farmers" surely does not lead to a "natural" state of the bush either.

And people should not live in fire-prone areas without appropriate clearing around buildings, sprinklers and fire-resistant buildings.

The argument is that aborigines have been pattern burning the landscape for so long, that many surviving plant and animal communities have come to depend on it. The 'natural state' is no longer desirable. If this is correct, by abandoning aboriginal fire management techniques we have reduced diversity at the landscape level, and many species now find survival difficult. The risk of wildfire also increases.

Thanks to Gammage, the subject should keep ecologists and land managers busy for the next decade or so.

Cheers

Have to agree maddog, Gammage's book is a fascinating read and must inspire some new and interesting research and thinking. I certainly don't look at the "wilderness" areas that we visit in quite the same way anymore.

Exactly!

So much faith is put in place by our collective recorded history. There is a much older record under our noses,
I suspect Gammage's book is amongst the most important in Australian history.

[David M]

You may be interested in this (crticial) review of Gammage's book here: http://academia.edu/1540825/Review_of_T ... ll_Gammage

(EDITED)

Last edited by David M on Mon 08 Jul, 2013 6:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[maddog]

Another good review can be found here:

http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/au ... eners/371/

[David M]

I still don't accept that human-induced burning of the bush is "natural" even if Aborigines have been doing it for thousands of years. They are still humans and they still interfered with nature - and dramatically changing it in an equivalent way to European settlers. The bush should be allowed to return to its pre-human settlement state, whatever that may be. (And we won't know until we let nature run its course with no artificial fires for many years, maybe a century plus.) Surely, the only valid baseline for the state of the bush is what exists without human interference?

[clarence]

"Pre-human settlement state" was probably last seen more than 40,000 years ago. The pre-historical record would include an ice age or two, extinction of the megafauna, introduction of the dingo, glaciation, sea level changes of 150m. I'm not sure that the Australian vegetation could ever return to a pre-human settlement state. What is "natural" is a big enough question on its own, and I agree it is a very good question.

Clarence

[maddog]

Amazon are currently asking $600 for a new hardcover version of Gammage's Book, and $790 second hand (the paperback and Kindle edition are more reasonably priced).

http://www.amazon.com/The-Biggest-Estat ... rd_title_0

[Pteropus]

Amazon are currently asking $600 for a new hardcover version of Gammage's Book, and $790 second hand (the paperback and Kindle edition are more reasonably priced).

http://www.amazon.com/The-Biggest-Estat ... rd_title_0

Well there goes any chance of me affording to read it!
(but surely that price is a mistake???)

[maddog]

Amazon are currently asking $600 for a new hardcover version of Gammage's Book, and $790 second hand (the paperback and Kindle edition are more reasonably priced).

http://www.amazon.com/The-Biggest-Estat ... rd_title_0

Well there goes any chance of me affording to read it!
(but surely that price is a mistake???)

Not even I would recommend Gammage to you at that price Pteropus. My guess is the hardcover edition has been sold out, each of the sellers is claiming they have stock, but they are hoping you do not purchase through them.

http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358

[Happy Pirate]

Gammage's book is great (reading it at the moment as prep for a Masters in Fire Ecology next year). Could also recommend Gill's 'Flammable Australia'.
So Clarence got it all right (what I've read of his posts so far). There IS good science for human controlled ignitions and it mainly relates to the adaptions that have taken place over the last 20,000+ years of Aboriginal intervention into 'natural' fire regimes and the idea that early dry season burns prevent much hotter and more extensive late season burns which inflict much more damage on soils and vegetation and even wildlife.
The unfortunate truth is you can't avoid fire in the Aus landscape and most of the 'no fire - ever' mentality is short term thinking and overly naive. There are only a few ecosystems in the country that wouldn't burn if we left them alone and unfortunately we have over-cut or drained most of them to the point where they will now burn anyway.
In another interesting book Bowman (Australian Rainforests - Islands of green in a land of fire) suggests that if it weren't for Aboriginal burning intervention we would have lost all (or nearly) of our rainforest from 20,000+ years of intense late dry-season storm ignited fires.

HOWEVER, Dept Env actions on fire ecology ARE NOT always based on science. Unfortunately, these depts are often influenced by bad policy directives (usually against their own better advice).
In Vic there is now a 'burn quota' that dictates that x % of the state must burn every year to prevent a recurrence of Black Saturday. Unfortunately, to fulfill quotas staff resort to burning regions like the Mallee and Little Desert, which are overly fire sensitive regions and not areas of concern for major bushfires.

Steve

[Happy Pirate]

I still don't accept that human-induced burning of the bush is "natural" even if Aborigines have been doing it for thousands of years. They are still humans and they still interfered with nature - and dramatically changing it in an equivalent way to European settlers. The bush should be allowed to return to its pre-human settlement state, whatever that may be. (And we won't know until we let nature run its course with no artificial fires for many years, maybe a century plus.) Surely, the only valid baseline for the state of the bush is what exists without human interference?

Ecological progression doesn't run like a movie that you can forward or reverse at will. 20-60 thousand years of human intervention into fire regimes means that letting nature 'run it's course' means it would be doing it without the adaptations, dynamics and relictual ecology that was in place in those much earlier times. Not to mention that the last time humans didn't walk this patch of 'earf' the climate was a lot wetter than generally in the last 20K years.
And if that wasn't enough, our last 200 y of land-clearing and agricultural practices have caused more local climate drying, soil degradation, extinctions and fire regime alteration than anything that could be mitigated through changed burning practices.
So in brief, there really is 'no going back'. We can only look at ideal and realistic landscape states and chart a way forward. (The basis of my future masters).

Steve

[Happy Pirate]

I worked in this field for several years and have postgraduate qualifications in fire ecology. For those of you who are genuinely interested in getting an understanding of the topic, may I suggest the book "The Ecology of Fire" by Rob Whelan. Very readable, comprehensive and science based.

Clarence

Clarence - where are you based? I worked for NAFI for a few years in Cape York. Currently working at JCU and looking for advice on future masters projects.

[Happy Pirate]

G'day folks,

I have heard a lot of mixed messages on this topic. On the one hand, there's the argument that any reduction in fuel loads is a good thing. On the other side I've heard that the burns do little to slow bushfires, and can actually be damaging. An ecologist I know told me recently they refer to many of these fires as "hazard increasing burns", because they actually cause a build up of fuel. Apparently, if you go to some areas six months after a low intensity hazard reduction burn goes through you will find more fuel on the ground because all the leaves and many branches fall following the fire, and there is lots of lush new plant growth too. The same person told me that many of these cold, winter burns are too cool to germinate some native plants that require fire, effectively harming their reproduction. On the other side of the ledger, many weeks respond well to these fires, so in some wilderness areas they are promoting weed expansion.

Does anyone have expertise on this? Or some good research? Or even anecdotal evidence one way or the other?

FC - you may well be right with this, each area of the country is different and unfortunately policy tends to be much broader than ecological regimes.
There is a recent study by Lindenmeyer that looks at 'landscape traps' - processes (fire, logging) that 'open up' a region that supports a wet micro-climate (rainforest and wet Eucalypt forests) and allow a spiraling increasing of drying micro-climate regimes (and thus fire) into the landscape.

It would depend on the micro-climate, ecology and past fire history of the region, you would need a local expert. It's certainly not an area free of debate!
Steve

[clarence]

Clarence - where are you based? I worked for NAFI for a few years in Cape York. Currently working at JCU and looking for advice on future masters projects.

I no longer work in that field, but did for some years. I'll PM you re fire stuff.

Clarence

[Stibb]

Gammage book is much cheaper here

eBook
http://www.booktopia.com.au/ebooks/the- ... 200AD0CB2A

hard copy
http://www.booktopia.com.au/the-biggest ... 11325.html

[maddog]

The price for a paperback has come down at Amazon too - only $22.96. But a new hardcover is still $600, and used from $3,542.35.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Biggest-Estat ... rd_title_0

[Travis22]

Picked up Gammage's book tonight from my local book shop. Had to order it in, Paperback, was $39bux.

Travis.

[clarence]

Given the recent Blue Mountians fires it is probably good the the NPWS has recently done large scale burning (like the Wild Dog burns). Sure the Wild Dogs is a substantial distance from the lower Blue Mtns. However, the first media/community response after fires like those of the last few days will be "the NPWS doesn't do enough burning- they should do more etc". At least the NPWS are in a position to say that they have done however many thousand hectares of hazard reduction in the last winter. Hopefully this would minismise public pressure for overzealous controlled burns in response to the recent fires.

It is times like now that the science and the politics can't be dealt with separately.

Clarence

[GPSGuided]

And we are still just in mid-spring. Still a long way to go for this season.

[walk2wineries]

Moondog may have a point.

I was driving through the forest in WA a couple of years ago and hit smoke, firies were out doing control burns according to the signs. Also barely visible through the smoke were signs forbidding the collection of firewood.

This is silly. Yes, fallen timber needed as habitat etc. But if its going to be burnt anyway?? Maybe we need a return to the Medieval (UK) laws wrt preservation of the "underwood" - ie fallen wood - my very vague recollection probably gleaned from Robin Hood is that peasants (pretty sure that includes bushwalkers in the 21st century!) were allowed to collect fallen wood that was within reach of the forest road/path. Very sensible, I thought, keeps the paths clear, decreases fire next to the road. Alternatively they could advertise that firewood could be collected from any area due to undergo conrol burning within the next month or so.

[Happy Pirate]

Moondog may have a point.

I was driving through the forest in WA a couple of years ago and hit smoke, firies were out doing control burns according to the signs. Also barely visible through the smoke were signs forbidding the collection of firewood.

This is silly. Yes, fallen timber needed as habitat etc. But if its going to be burnt anyway?? Maybe we need a return to the Medieval (UK) laws wrt preservation of the "underwood" - ie fallen wood - my very vague recollection probably gleaned from Robin Hood is that peasants (pretty sure that includes bushwalkers in the 21st century!) were allowed to collect fallen wood that was within reach of the forest road/path. Very sensible, I thought, keeps the paths clear, decreases fire next to the road. Alternatively they could advertise that firewood could be collected from any area due to undergo conrol burning within the next month or so.

Wino
While there are conflicts with the retention of habitat and the need to conduct prevention burns, the removal of light flammable debris from wood collection is similar in some ways to the idea of Grazing in National Parks.
Both claim to reduce the bushfire hazard although both disrupt the natural fire regimes by removing a specific layer or level of flammable material compared to the entire debris composition.
The problem with any flammable material removal is that it tends to occur at a particular level e.g. grass only, light campfire timber only etc.
The removal of light material (as noted above) means that there is an accumulation of heavy debris that will only burn during massive burn events but will fail to ignite or even suppress progression during light reduction burns.
The fallen debris (hollow logs) needed by wildlife is of a much larger scale than that usually used for small fires and is usually more of a refuge than a hazard during light burns although it can be destroyed by unconstrained campfire building or unchecked canopy fires.

So what may seem like good site management in the short-term can actually lead to greater damage in the longer term.

Stevo

[Happy Pirate]

Maybe we need a return to the Medieval (UK) laws wrt preservation of the "underwood" - ie fallen wood - my very vague recollection probably gleaned from Robin Hood is that peasants (pretty sure that includes bushwalkers in the 21st century!) were allowed to collect fallen wood that was within reach of the forest road/path. Very sensible, I thought, keeps the paths clear, decreases fire next to the road. Alternatively they could advertise that firewood could be collected from any area due to undergo conrol burning within the next month or so.

W2W
What you are describing in UK history is actually the massive and wholesale clearance of forest in the UK that removed (from memory) about 80% of the forest cover from the A.D. landscape compared to current cover.
All those James Herriott romantic moors and highlands?
Forest cleared as a result of successive generations of unrestrained "peasant" forest clearing.

Your "very sensible" attitude to vegetation management in Australia seems to be informed by a feudal political system in a very different era, country and landscape that decimated the UK landscape to levels we haven't even approached (thankfully) in Aus.
The short-term attitude of failure to understand the ecology of fire but instead to "keep.. the paths clear, decreases fire next to the road" makes the next major conflagration so much more intense.
Steve

Last edited by Happy Pirate on Tue 22 Oct, 2013 10:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Happy Pirate]

Alternatively they could advertise that firewood could be collected from any area due to undergo conrol burning within the next month or so.

By my multiple posts I appear to be ranting
sorry

W2W
not meaning to pick on you personally - all discussion on this topic is relevant. Just reacting to a re-activation of this topic (one of a particular personal interest).
I appreciate your input.
But removal of light flammable debris as I mentioned above does play havoc with predictable fire regimes. And once you legitimise off-track firewood collection you legitimise off-track vegetation trampling, live vegetation damage and all the other potential damage from walking tracks including erosion, weed dispersal, Phytophthora spread, wildlife disturbance and vegetation damage.
And the most damaging fires have an energy that would not be deflected by light debris removal from paths anyway.

I truly wish there was a way of excluding fire from the landscape that didn't risk even greater conflagration. I would love to see an expansion of moist, productive accumulative landscapes over dry, flammable 'lossy' landscapes but unfortunately blanket fire exclusion is not the answer.
Only a gradual, intentional, manipulation of the landscape towards a different system over centuries would work and such policies are beyond both our current political systems and our current ecological focus.

Bowman presents the idea that Aboriginal burning may have reduced Rainforest loss by preventing hot-fire incursion through early-season burning which is contrary to much current thinking.
So on a landscape scale the science is still a work in progress.
But we do know a fair bit.

Best
Steve

[perfectlydark]

With respect happy pirate I dont think we can really compare bushwalkers taking small amounts of wood nearby for small fires to british peasants that would have been taking much larger quantities for day to day life.

[icefest]

The Conversation did a nice article on fuel reduction burns today: http://theconversation.com/bushfire-haz ... ield-19393

[Travis22]

Interesting website Icefest. Thanks for the link however i didnt find that article interesting or informative at all on the matter.

I did like some of the other articles there tho.

I guess re: the fuel reduction burns article i think its pretty vague, too vague. Im more interested then ever these days and constantly find myself in the middle between all bush user groups. Its very frustrating.

All that article needed was some bs comment about alpine grazing to top it off. (For the record im 110% against alpine grazing).

Travis.

[Travis22]

Only a gradual, intentional, manipulation of the landscape towards a different system over centuries would work and such policies are beyond both our current political systems and our current ecological focus.

Best
Steve

This kind of sums up where im at.

Travis.

[icefest]

Sorry Travis, I'll look up some real journal articles on the topic for you.
I like The Conversation though, most articles are written by academics and not journalists.

[Travis22]

Id never heard of 'The Conversation' and i appreciate your thought. I wouldnt be surprised if something in the article might have gone over my head - given a lot of the fantastic conversations in this thread and on this forum do, i guess when you look at whats discussed here v's whats written on the 'media' one cannot help but become rather put off.

I should have worded my reply better, im home crook as a dog (cold/flu) and not really thinking properly. I dont like giving my opinion especially on this site given the more i read from you fellow members the more i understand i dont know squat

Im sick of the bush fire and cattle in the high country thing, im completely surrounded by people who still believe allowing cattle in the ANP would magically save the bush. What i got from that article was too save the bush you need either the 'sword or the shield' (i guess i should have been happy at least the cow's were not mentioned lol) when IMO in reality neither will change squat. Well they might save a couple houses here or there but in essence bugger all will change? (For sure, clear the bush from your house and it might survive but what im thinking is if we continue to maintain the bush / wilderness / forests the way we have been we will only continue to see unprecedented fire behavior).

Travis.

[icefest]

This is my interpretation:

There are two methods, which we can think of as the “sword” and the “shield”. The “sword” is offensive: prescribed burning throughout the landscape. The “shield” is targeted, defensive hazard reduction close to properties and infrastructure.
Two methods of burning. Local and targeted, wide-area and broad.

To halve the risk to people and property using prescribed fire would mean treating about 10% of the landscape each year. This is an order of magnitude above current levels of prescribed burning, and a similar increase in funding would be required.
If using broad area technique, you need to burn 10% of all land a year, more than 10x what's currently being burnt.

Post-fire analyses and modelling show that, for example, using prescribed fire next to properties may be up to five times more effective than treatments more distant in the landscape.
The same treatment close to an important area is five times more effective.

But these efforts will never completely remove the risk. No financially feasible hazard reduction program will minimise risk to people and property. Very high levels of risk will remain even when these ambitious and carefully-planned programs are implemented.
You can not avoid all risk. Highly dangerous areas only become less dangerous.

Send me a PM if you want a copy of the paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 9712001752