The impacts of the 2019-20 bushfire season continue to be felt deeply by communities, and the forest and wood products industry in Australia. For plantation owners and growers, future climate projections indicate wildfires will become more frequent and intense going forward.
A recently published FWPA-supported research report from the FLARE Wildfire Research Group at the University of Melbourne outlines how the forestry industry can best respond to the increasing threat of bushfires.
This research represents a substantial step forward in identifying future fire risk to plantations and providing evidence-based solutions to mitigate it.
The project provides:
- nuanced region-specific models for predicting plantation fuel structure and fire behaviour
- fire profiles for plantations and nearby communities under changing climates, using innovative fire-modelling tools
- current data to inform forest management over several plantation cycles across Australia.
“A better understanding of how fuel accumulates over time in plantations means improved performance of fire behaviour simulators and, in turn, more accurate predictions of fire risk for plantation owners,” said Dr Kate Parkins, Fire Risk Analyst at the University of Melbourne, and lead researcher on this project.
“Our results indicate that fuel loads have previously been under-predicted at key times during a rotation. This suggests that, in some cases, landscape-scale fire risk in areas with plantations may also have been underestimated.
“As part of our research, we explored future fire risk across different growing regions and under different climate projections. This enabled us to quantify where in the landscape and under what conditions fire risk will be at its highest.
“This information can be used by plantation owners to guide strategic fuel management and minimise future fire risk,” Parkins said.
The researchers highlighted that, for plantations overall, rapid suppression response times represent the best area for investment to minimise plantation losses under a changing climate.
In addition, other important approaches identified by the researchers to help reduce future fire impact on plantations included continued fuel management strategies outside of plantations, and a focus on increased early detection.
“Given that most plantation owners and managers currently have little influence over the amount and location of prescribed burning outside of and adjacent to plantations, fuel management within plantations in conjunction with improving suppression response will be an important area for future investment to help minimise impacts on both plantation and community assets under a hotter or drier climate,” Parkins said.
“The research confirms that rapid response times and continued fuel management across the landscape will become increasingly important. However, the development of plantation fuel models that better represent fuel accumulation both over time and spatially are a key outcome of this project that we hope will significantly improve the ability to model fire spread in plantations,” said Jodie Mason, FWPA’s Forest Research Manager.
“We’re incredibly pleased to support this research, targeted at helping Australian plantations owners, as well as the broader community, to mitigate the risk of bushfires. I would like to thank the research team and participating growers for their strong collaboration on this project,” Mason said.
Click here to download the full report Characterising and managing fire risks to plantations under changing climates.
