Wildfires risk permanently altering Australian landscape, scientists warn
SCIENTISTS say the Australian landscape is being permanently altered by the nation’s wildfire crisis as a warming climate brings profound changes.
Heat waves and drought have fuelled bigger and more frequent fires in parts of Australia, with some 40,000 square miles scorched so far this fire season.
While blazes continue to rage in the south-east, 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. Since September, the fires have killed 28 people and burned more than 2,600 houses.
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.
Flames have blazed through jungles dried out by drought, such as Eungella National Park, where shrouds of mist have been replaced by smoke.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 have said these forests don’t burn, that there’s not enough material and they are wet. Well they did,” said Sebastian Pfautsch, a research fellow at Western Sydney University.
“Climate change is happening now, and we are seeing the effects of it.”
High temperatures, drought and more frequent wildfires – all linked to climate change – may make it impossible for even fireadapted 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.