Journal article
Ecological implications of standard fire mapping approaches for fire management of the World Heritage property, Fraser Island, Australia
International Journal of Wildland Fire, Vol.22(3), pp.381-393
2013
Abstract
The characterisation of spatiotemporal fire patchiness is requisite for informing biodiversity conservation management in many landscape settings. Often, conservation managers are reliant on manually derived fire-history mapping products that delineate fire perimeters. An alternative standard approach concerns the application of remote sensing, typically using band combination indices obtained from relatively fine-scale imagery sensors. For Fraser Island, a World Heritage Area in subtropical, fire-prone eastern Australia, we contrast diagnostic fire-regime characteristics for different vegetation types over a 20-year period (1989-2008) as derived from historical manual, and remotely sensed, fire-mapping approaches. For the remote sensing component we adapt a commonly used approach utilising a differenced normalised burn ratio (dNBR) index derived from Landsat Thematic Mapper imagery. Manual mapping resulted in overestimation of fire-affected area (especially large fires) and fire frequency, whereas the dNBR procedure resulted in underestimation of fire-affected area under low fire-severity conditions, and overestimation of fire patchiness. Of significance for conservation management, (1) age class and related distributions for flammable vegetation types differed markedly between the two mapping approaches, (2) regardless, both methods demonstrated that substantial fuel loads had accumulated in flammable vegetation types by the end of the study period and (3) fuel age was shown to have a more significant effect than did seasonality on the incidence of very large (>1000 ha) fires. The study serves as an introduction to ongoing research concerning the measurement and application of fire patchiness to conservation management in flammable eastern Australian vegetation types.
Details
- Title
- Ecological implications of standard fire mapping approaches for fire management of the World Heritage property, Fraser Island, Australia
- Authors
- Sanjeev K Srivastava (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Science, Health, Education and EngineeringLee King (Author) - Sunshine Coast Regional CouncilC Mitchell (Author) - Queensland Department of Environment and Resources ManagementAaron Wiegand (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Science, Health, Education and EngineeringR W (Bill) Carter (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Arts and BusinessAlison Shapcott (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Science, Health, Education and EngineeringJeremey Russell-Smith (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Science, Health, Education and Engineering
- Publication details
- International Journal of Wildland Fire, Vol.22(3), pp.381-393
- Publisher
- C S I R O Publishing
- DOI
- 10.1071/WF11037
- ISSN
- 1049-8001
- Organisation Unit
- Centre for Bioinnovation; School of Law and Society; Sustainability Research Centre; School of Science, Technology and Engineering; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Science and Engineering - Legacy; School of Social Sciences - Legacy
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99450045802621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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