- Title:
-
Assessing the Effects of Contrasting Fire Intervals on Biodiversity at a Landscape Scale
- Date:
- September 2008
- Organisations
- BCRC
- Authors:
- R.S Wittkuhn, L. McCaw, G Phelan, J Farr, G Liddelow, P Van Heurck, A Wills, R Robinson, R Cranfield, J Fielder, C Dornan, A N Anderson
- Location:
- Australia, Australia
Overview
The International Bushfire Research Conference 2008 - incorporating The 15th annual AFAC Conference, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Few studies have examined the cumulative effects of fires on biodiversity at a landscape scale in southwestern Australia. In this study we compare the diversity of organisms at sites with contrasting fire histories with a view to providing guidelines on fire management for biodiversity values.
Using a 35-year dataset if fire occurence, we identified a study area of 50,000 ha that contains a variety of ecosystems, has minimal human disturbance, and has a common fuel age (all burnt in 2002/03). We surveyed sites in two contrasting vegetation types: jarrah/marri forest (forest) and seasonally-inundated sedgeland/heathland (heath) that had experienced succesive short fire intervals (<5 years) or successive long fire intervals (>10 years). Areas with mixed frequency regimes, and two sites that had only experienced two fires over the 35 year period with a fire interval of 30 years (forest only) were sampled. We collected data on the diversity and abundance of flora, beetles and ants (all sites), as well as fungi and vertebrate fauna (forest sites only). In this paper, we presented data from the first year of sampling. These are significant differences between the forest and heath assemblage of flora, beetles and ants. However, within a vegetation type, site characteristics appear to be stronger drivers of species assemblage than fire regime.
Data analysis is on-going to investigate the treatment effects on those taxa that are most sensitive to inappropriate fire intervals, as well as the collection of a second year of data.
