New online - July 2020

Plenty of new CRC reports and journal articles are now available through the CRC website. Read the details below in July’s wrap up.

CRC reports

From the University of Sydney, Danica Parnell, Dr Malcolm Possell and A/Prof Tina Bell have released a new report for the Optimisation of fuel reduction burning regimes project. The report describes a model that can be used to estimate carbon stocks in surface fuel layers using empirical data collected from dry sclerophyll forests from a range of sites in Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. The three authors wrote a second report for the project with Dr David Pepper (University of Sydney) that models predictions for the fuel reduction burning of eucalypt open forest sites in the greater Blue Mountains region that underwent prescribed burns and fieldwork campaigns in 2019.

Prof Mehmet Ulubasoglu from Deakin University has authored a new report that investigates the income effects of the 2009 Toodyay bushfire on the income trajectory of residents in the small regional town in Western Australia for his project Optimising post-disaster recovery interventions in Australia. This report is the fourth and final one in a series analysing the effects of various disasters - the 2009 Victorian Black Saturday bushfires, the 2010/11 Queensland floods and Cyclone Oswald 2013 - on individual income. 

Journal articles

The journal article Prevalence and predictors of suicidal thoughts and behaviours among Australian police and emergency services employees by Dr Michael Kyron (University of Western Australia), Wavne Rikkers (University of Western Australia), Prof Andrew Page (Beyond Blue), Patrice O’Brien (Beyond Blue), Jennifer Bartlett (University of Western Australia), Dr Anthony LaMontagne (Deakin University) and Dr David Lawrence (University of Western Australia) was published in the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry. The research relates to the National mental health and wellbeing study of police and emergency services project and presents rates of suicide thoughts and behaviours of police and emergency services personnel around Australia and examines personal and working environment risk and protective factors.

Dr Michael Kyron (University of Western Australia), Wavne Rikkers (University of Western Australia), Patrice O’Brien (Beyond Blue), Jennifer Bartlett (University of Western Australia) and Dr David Lawrence (University of Western Australia) wrote a second journal article for the project. Experiences of police and emergency services employees with workers’ compensation claims for mental health issues was published in the Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation and assesses employees’ experiences of the workers’ compensation claim process for psychological trauma, stress or a mental health condition sustained during the course of work in the police and emergency services sector.

Research by Dr Alex Filkov (University of Melbourne), Tuan Ngo (University of Melbourne), Dr Stuart Matthews (NSW Rural Fire Service), Simeon Telfer (Department for Environment and Water SA) and A/Prof Trent Penman (University of Melbourne) was published in the Journal of Safety Science and Resilience. The paper Impact of Australia's catastrophic 2019/20 bushfire season on communities and environment. Retrospective analysis and current trends relates to the From hectares to tailor made solutions for risk mitigation project and Threshold conditions for extreme fire behaviour projects, showing that smoke from bushfires may be a significant concern in the future for the global community as it travels to other countries and continents. Based on preliminary data, the research predicts it will take many years to restore the economy and infrastructure in impacted areas, and to recover animal and vegetation biodiversity.