Fires: Irreversible forest losses in Oz Landscape is being permanently altered, say scientists
This photo shows a burnt out part of local farmer Rick Morris’ 2,300-acre property on Kangaroo Island after bushfires ravaged the island off the south coast of Australia.
Canberra, Jan. 19: Australia”s forests are burning at a rate unmatched in modern times and scientists say the landscape is being permanently altered as a warming climate brings profound changes to the island continent.
Heat waves and drought have fueled bigger and more frequent fires in parts of Australia, so far this season torching some 40,000 square miles, an area about as big as Ohio.
With blazes still raging in the country’s southeast, government officials are drawing up plans to reseed burned areas to speed up forest recovery that could otherwise take decades or even centuries.
But some scientists and forestry experts doubt that reseeding and other intervention efforts can match the scope of the destruction. Before the recent wildfires, ecologists divided up Australia’s native vegetation into two categories: Fire-adapted landscapes that burn periodically, and those that don’t burn. In the recent fires, that distinction lost meaning — even rainforests and peat swamps caught fire, likely changing them forever.
Flames have blazed through jungles dried out by drought, such as Eungella National Park, where shrouds of mist have been replaced by smoke.
“Anybody would said these forests have don’t
burn, that there’s not enough material and they are wet. Well they did,” said forest restoration expert Sebastian Pfautsch, a research fellow at Western Sydney University.
“Climate change is happening now, and we are seeing the effects of it,” he said. High temperatures, drought and more frequent wildfires — all linked to climate change — may make it impossible for even fire-adapted forests to be fully restored, scientists say.
“The normal processes of recovery are going to be less effective, going to take longer,” said Roger Kitching, an ecologist at Griffith University in Queensland. “Instead of an ecosystem taking a decade, it may take a century or more to recover, all assuming we don’t get another fire season of this magnitude soon.”
Young stands of mountain ash trees — which are not expected to burn because they have minimal foliage — have burned in the Australian Alps, the highest mountain range on the continent. Fire this year wiped out stands re-seeded following fires in 2013.
Mountain ash, the world's tallest flowering trees, reach heights of almost 90 metres and live hundreds of years. They’re an iconic presence in southeast Australia.