Abstract
There are conflicting conclusions on how the flammability of wet eucalypt forests changes in the time after disturbances such as logging or wildfire. Some conclude that forests are most flammable in the decades following disturbance, while others conclude that disturbance has no effect on flammability. The comparative flammability of Eucalyptus nitens plantations in the same environment as wet eucalypt forest is not known. We determined fire incidence and fire severity in regrowth, mature and old growth wet eucalypt forest, and E. nitens plantation, in the Huon Valley, Tasmania after the January–February 2019 wildfire. To control for topographic variation and fire weather, we randomly selected sites within the fire footprint, then randomly located a paired site for each in different forest types in the same topographic environment within 3 km. Each pair of sites was burned on the same day. Old growth forest and plantations were the least likely to burn. Old growth and mature forest exhibited scorched eucalypt crowns to a much lesser degree than regrowth forests. In a comparison of paired sites, plantation forest was less likely to burn than combined mature and old growth forests, but in all cases of detected ignition the canopy of plantation was scorched. The lower flammability of older forests, and their importance as an increasing store of carbon, suggests that a cessation of logging outside plantations might have considerable benefits.
Highlights
Unplanned forest fires frequently kill people and destroy property
The present study investigates the effect on fire incidence and severity of two forest management practices common in Tasmania; clearfelling and plantation establishment
There were no significant differences between forest types in any of the environmental conditions for the data set as a whole (Table 1) and for any of the paired forest types
Summary
Unplanned forest fires frequently kill people and destroy property. For example, the 2009Black Saturday fires caused the loss of 179 human lives and more than 2000 homes [1]. Unplanned forest fires frequently kill people and destroy property. Black Saturday fires caused the loss of 179 human lives and more than 2000 homes [1]. Thirty-three people died (24th January 2020) during the 2019/2020 fires in Victoria and New South Wales [2]. After extreme events like these, there is often a short-lived political urgency to take actions to prevent future ferocious fire events. Fire incidence is expected to increase over the century in both the Southern and Northern hemispheres, in wet forests [3,4,5]. Fire hazard in forests, human land use and policy are connected in socio-ecological systems [6]. The effect of disturbance history on fire hazard in forests is specific to vegetation characteristics and fire regime [7]
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