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Austral Ecology - 2023 - Thorley - What type of rainforest burnt in the South East Queensland s 2019 20 bushfires and how10.26 MB
Published VersionCC BY-NC-ND V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
What type of rainforest burnt in the South East Queensland's 2019/20 bushfires and how might this impact biodiversity
Austral Ecology, Vol.48(3), pp.616-642
2023
Appears in UniSC Supported Open Access Outputs
Abstract
Bushfires burnt over 18 million hectares across Australia's east coast, including rainforests, over the spring and summer 2019/2020 period. Rainforest harbours a large percentage of Australia's biodiversity and does not usually burn and therefore understanding the extent and biodiversity implications was a priority. The National Indicative Aggregated Fire Extent Dataset (NIAFED) combined with detailed regional ecosystem (RE) mapping was used to estimate the perimeter and area of each of the burnt rainforest types within South East Queensland (SEQ). Previous biodiversity estimates for each rainforest regional ecosystem type combined with remnant ecosystem mapping data then enabled an assessment of the potential biodiversity impacts of the fires for SEQ rainforest. We found that 12% of the rainforest estate in SEQ was within the burn footprint (29 031 ha) including parts of the UNESCO World Heritage Gondwana Rainforests of Australia. Fifty per cent of the total remnant area of the Endangered rainforest type, semi-evergreen vine thicket on Mesozoic to Proterozoic igneous rocks (RE: 12.12.17) was potentially burnt. This rainforest type has high diversity. Burn severity analysis found that the rainforest primarily burnt with low severity, however, there were patches of high severity. Accuracy assessment of severity mapping resulted in a weak correlation (0.57) due to the underestimation of ground fires in rainforest. As expected, we found rainforest-suppressed fires. However, in contrast to expectations, we found the wettest rainforest types and putative past refugia burnt more than other rainforest types. These results suggest that given drought conditions any rainforest could burn, and we can expect that the area of rainforest will contract if both incidences of drought and wildfires increase due to climate change.
Details
- Title
- What type of rainforest burnt in the South East Queensland's 2019/20 bushfires and how might this impact biodiversity
- Authors
- James Thorley (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Science, Technology and EngineeringSanjeev Kumar Srivastava (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Sustainability Research ClusterAlison Shapcott (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Centre for Bioinnovation
- Publication details
- Austral Ecology, Vol.48(3), pp.616-642
- Publisher
- John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
- Date published
- 2023
- DOI
- 10.1111/aec.13293
- ISSN
- 1442-9993; 1442-9985
- Copyright note
- © 2023 The Authors. Austral Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Ecological Society of Australia. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Science, Technology and Engineering; Centre for Bioinnovation; Sustainability Research Cluster
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99708797302621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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