Fire Severity in Reburnt Forest
The primary question of both my Honours and PhD research has been, how is the severity of a fire affected by the severity of previous fires? When I was first starting my research, there were a handful of studies which answered this question in parts of the US, but none in the forests of Australia. I got in first with my Honours project in the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales, now published in Ecosphere. Using remotely sensed fire severity maps and other spatial data, I found that high severity fire was more likely when the previous fire was also high severity. This, of course, raised furher questions, which have driven my research since.
I found that high severity fire was more likely after a previous high severity fire
We hypothesised that high severity fire promotes rapid dense shrub recruitment and regeneration, creating a more continuous fuel structure and increasing flammability. If another fire occurs, the flames have a pathway into the forest canopy, making high severity fire more likely.
I expanded the research to investigate the effects of a sequence of previous fires on fire severity and found that two previous fires have a detectable effect on the third.
Read more here.
Fire Severity in the 2019-20 Fires
Coming soon.
Main Collaborators
Owen Price - University of Wollongong
Meaghan Jenkins - University of Wollongong/ NSW Rural Fire Service