Project 5
Determining appropriate ecological fire regimes to manage biodiversity in the heathy woodlands of southwest Victoria
With 'inappropriate fire regimes' listed as a threatening process under State legislation, land managers are committed to develop science-based ecological burning strategies which achieve both biodiversity and asset protection objectives, and operate at a landscape scale across all land tenures. While fire is recognised as a major driver of ecological processes at landscape scales and that ecological burning is an important management tool, the scale, intensity and frequency of burning needs to be appropriate for particular ecological communities. Invertebrates and non-vascular plants make up the bulk of the biodiversity in these environments; however the impact of fire management strategies and the likely consequences for ecosystem function are poorly understood. This project will investigate the spatial and temporal configurations of woodland post-fire age classes, and the extent and intensity of burning within patches, and its effect upon invertebrate communities.
This project is supported by Parks Victoria and the Department of Sustainability and Environment, and is associated with Bushfire CRC Project B3.1 (http://www.bushfirecrc.com/html/B31.htm). It is supervised by Dr Alan York.
Link to Bushfire Research and Developement Group