Planned and unplanned fire regimes on public land in south-east Queensland
Martyn Eliott
A D , Tom Lewis A B , Tyron Venn C and Sanjeev Kumar Srivastava A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A School of Science and Engineering, University of the Sunshine Coast, Locked Bag 4, Maroochydore DC, Qld 4558, Australia.
B Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, 41 George Street, Brisbane, Qld 4000, Australia.
C School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, University of Queensland, Hartley Teakle Building, Room S325, Level 3, South Wing, Keyhole Road, St Lucia, Qld 4067, Australia.
D Corresponding author. Email: martyn.eliott@research.usc.edu.au
International Journal of Wildland Fire 29(5) 326-338 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF18213
Submitted: 30 November 2018 Accepted: 19 July 2019 Published: 27 August 2019
Abstract
Land management agencies in Queensland conduct planned burning for a variety of reasons, principally for management of fuels for human asset protection and biodiversity management. Using Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service’s archived manually derived fire reports, this study considered the individual components of the fire regime (extent, frequency and season) to determine variation between planned and unplanned fire regimes in south-east Queensland. Overall, between 2004 and 2015, planned fire accounted for 31.6% and unplanned fire 68.4% of all fire on Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service state-managed land. Unplanned fire was more common in spring (September–October), and planned fire was more common in winter (June–August). Unplanned fire affected 71.4% of open forests and woodlands (148 563 ha), whereas 58.8% of melaleuca communities (8016 ha) and 66.6% of plantations (2442 ha) were burnt with planned fire. Mapping fire history at a regional scale can be readily done with existing publicly available datasets, which can be used to inform the assessment of planned burning effectiveness for human asset protection and the management of biodiversity. Fire management will benefit from the continued recording of accurate fire occurrence data, which allows for detailed fire regime mapping and subsequent adaptive management of fire regimes in the public domain.
Additional keywords: controlled burn, ecological burn, fire mapping, prescribed fire, wildfire.
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