Fire in the Australian Landscape: An overview.
Bushfires are commonly perceived as a negative factor for the environment, destroying forests, provoking properties losses and occasionally human death. That misperception might be due to a narrow understanding of fire’s action in nature: In a wider perspective, it has a major influence at nutrient cycling and the biodiversity of populations in an ecosystem, despite causing problems to our modern society.
Fire is a constituent part of Australia’s history, not only regarding natural fires occurring for millions of years due to its mainly hot and dry climate, but also ones of human origin: When aborigines arrived in Australia, around 64000 and 75000 years ago (Rasmussen et al. 2011), they had a major impact in the environment through fire-stick farming, which refers to the continuous usage of fire in environments with purposes of changing the species composition and assist hunting…show more content… Bushfires which occur north to the Tropic of Capricorn, where more fuel is accumulated, fires are likely to be more severe (up to 100,000 kW/m) and tend to make up for 90% of the total fire events in the country, whereas southern fires have less fuel accumulation and fires only reach up to 20,000 kW/m (González-Cabán 2009).
When a bushfire occurs, there’s a sudden increase of nutrients due to the ash layer, especially calcium, potassium and magnesium (Coutinho 1982), which associated with a higher light incidence due to clearance of the canopy and higher terrain available, it creates an environment which is more easily colonized (MacLean et al. 1983). Plants in fire-prone areas have adapted to the fire regimen of such regions, with strategies such and fire-dependant germination and dispersion (Keeley et al. 2011), and therefore a change in fire frequency might compromise flora and fauna