Abstract
Australia’s 2019–2020 ‘Black Summer’ bushfires burnt more than 8 million hectares of vegetation across the south-east of the continent, an event unprecedented in the last 200 years. Here we report the impacts of these fires on vascular plant species and communities. Using a map of the fires generated from remotely sensed hotspot data we show that, across 11 Australian bioregions, 17 major native vegetation groups were severely burnt, and up to 67–83% of globally significant rainforests and eucalypt forests and woodlands. Based on geocoded species occurrence data we estimate that >50% of known populations or ranges of 816 native vascular plant species were burnt during the fires, including more than 100 species with geographic ranges more than 500 km across. Habitat and fire response data show that most affected species are resilient to fire. However, the massive biogeographic, demographic and taxonomic breadth of impacts of the 2019–2020 fires may leave some ecosystems, particularly relictual Gondwanan rainforests, susceptible to regeneration failure and landscape-scale decline.
Highlights
Australia’s 2019–2020 ‘Black Summer’ bushfires burnt more than 8 million hectares of vegetation across the south-east of the continent, an event unprecedented in the last 200 years
We developed a continent-wide fire layer based on Digital Earth Australia remotely sensed historical hotspot data gridded at a 2.5 km resolution over the period 1 July 2019 to 11 February 2020 (Fig. 1a; see ‘Methods’)
Based on this layer we estimate that some 200 major fires burnt through 10.4 million hectares (Mha; ca. 25.7 million acres) of land in south-eastern Australia (Fig. 1b) until extinguished or brought under control in mid-February 2020
Summary
Australia’s 2019–2020 ‘Black Summer’ bushfires burnt more than 8 million hectares of vegetation across the south-east of the continent, an event unprecedented in the last 200 years. Using a map of the fires generated from remotely sensed hotspot data we show that, across 11 Australian bioregions, 17 major native vegetation groups were severely burnt, and up to 67–83% of globally significant rainforests and eucalypt forests and woodlands. We quantify the biogeographic and taxonomic impact of the 2019–2020 bushfires on vascular plant taxa and associated vegetation types across the south-east of the Australian mainland using a continent-wide fire layer and geocoded species occurrence data. The megafires occurred within globally significant biodiversity hotspots with high richness and endemism across important plant groups (e.g., Proteaceae, eucalypts), including Gondwanan and subtropical rainforest species. Trait analysis reveals that most of the plants affected are likely fire resilient, the results show potentially important effects on the demography and viability of many plant species across multiple taxonomic groups
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