Published works

This year we have made remarkable progress with collection and analysis of spatially explicit data in relation to fuel reduction burning. From this data, a number of reports have been produced. The intent has been to transform milestone reports into peer-reviewed publications to ensure that the research we are doing is robust enough to pass peer-review and that End Users can have confidence in our recommendations. In the past 12 months the research team has produced seven peer-reviewed publications and two final milestone reports and have presented at both international and national conferences.

The journals that we have published or intend to publish in have impact factors of 2.4 or greater and are rated in the top quartile for journals in the fields of Land Management, Forestry, Ecology, Fuels Technology or Chemistry.

Although we have had several successive End Users associated with the project we have worked hard to maintain contact with our industry partners and to keep them up to date with our research progress. The research team has established valuable links with operational staff, firstly, to access recently burnt sites and, secondly, to help End Users to understand how and why data is collected. A sampling protocol has been developed and the efficacy of our methods has been tested in the field.

Recent major fire events in Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia and changes in government policy in Victoria related to risk-based fire management are creating need for new research into the effectiveness of fuel reduction burning. The expertise that we have in our project team and our knowledge of landscape-scale variation sees us well placed to embark upon new directions of research including the impact of risk-based fuel reduction strategies on vegetation, carbon pools and water resources.