[LINK] Bush Fire Speeds (was Re: home emergencies)

[Marghanita da Cruz]

Roger Clarke wrote:
> Roger wrote:
>>>  Fortunately one of the main stands of that in the Brindabellas 
>>> somehow survived, with the fire going around it.
> 
>>>  From: Marghanita da Cruz <marghanita at ramin.com.au>
>> Did the fire miss the stand of Mountain Ash or did it recover?
> 
> It missed it.
> 
> Despite the well-known ability of eucalypts (except snow gum / E. 
> pauciflora) to regenerate from the trunk and main limbs outwards, the 
> Canberra fire was so fierce that a frightening percentage of the 
> trees never recovered.  Even on the Coolemon ridge-line above us, 
> 60-70% of the trees simply died.  The government removed them, so it 
> doesn't look so ghostly any more.

The really ghostly scenes in Canberra were the burnt radiata pine forest. Though 
from memory, the cork plantation survived.

> 
> The alpine areas in both NSW and Vic, dominated by pauciflora, will 
> take decades to resume business as usual (or as-once-was), because 
> snow gums regenerate from the roots, and of course growth is slower 
> at altitude anyway.
> 
> Because many of the Vic fires of 2009 were even more fierce than 
> ACT'03, I fear that a big percentage of all E. species will simply 
> die.  They may take a couple of decades to fall over, and 
> regeneration will be very slow.
> 

It would be difficult to tell, given that a program to monitor effects of Fire 
on vegetation in the ACT seems to have taken a few years to put in place.

> ACT State of the Environment 2007
> Indicator: Fire
....
> During the reporting period, the ACT Government established programs to monitor vegetation recovery after the 2003 bushfire and after controlled hazard reduction burns. It also established an auditing process for Bushfire Operational Plans to determine the extent to which activities had been carried out and had met prescribed standards. The ESA has also begun planning for a proposed fire management database and information system as part of the Strategic Bushfire Management Plan Version 2. Monitoring gaps that need to be addressed during the next reporting period include assessing the effectiveness of all fuel reduction activities in terms of reducing fire hazard, and monitoring the impacts of grazing, slashing and physically removing material on native ecosystems and their component plant and animal species.
> 
<http://www.environmentcommissioner.act.gov.au/soe/2007actreport/indicators07/fire07>

Marghanita
-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
http://www.ramin.com.au
Phone: (+61)0414 869202