Prescribed burning and catchment management

Public and professional expectations of fire agencies and land managers have risen considerably and a greater, more transparent understanding of the trade-offs involved in the management of landscape fire and prescribed burning is required. Tools which standardise risk assessment across different vegetation types, management objectives, agencies and communities would be useful to ensure threats are recognised and treated in the same way.

The relationship between climate change and vegetation/ecosystem changes has major implications for fire management and risk assessment. Changes to ecosystems will, at a minimum, affect fuel accumulation and distribution as well as affecting the environmental outcomes required from fire management programs. The location and extent of fire prone and fire sensitive vegetation is likely to change in relation to climatic changes, presenting new challenges for land management and fire suppression operations.

This cluster seeks to understand:

• How to incorporate trade-offs between community safety, asset protection, ecosystem services and land management goals in designing and implementing fire regimes and effective prescribed burning across different landscapes.
• How to develop sustainable fire management in remote and regional Australia under different land management regimes and climate change scenarios, focusing on the capacity and resilience of Indigenous communities across northern Australia.
• How will climate change affect fire regimes and bushfire risk across Australia? How should land managers adjust their current fire management and prescribed burning programs to account for future scenarios?