Impacts of changing fire regimes on hollow-bearing trees in south-eastern Australia

Philip Gibbons; Dejan Stojanovic; David B. Lindenmayer; Giselle Owens

doi:10.1071/WF23094

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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Impacts of changing fire regimes on hollow-bearing trees in south-eastern Australia

Philip Gibbons ^A ^* , Dejan Stojanovic ^A , David B. Lindenmayer ^A and Giselle Owens ^A

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University, 141 Linnaeus Way, Acton, ACT, 2601, Australia.

^* Correspondence to: philip.gibbons@anu.edu.au

International Journal of Wildland Fire 33, WF23094 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF23094

Submitted: 15 June 2023 Accepted: 8 January 2024 Published: 1 February 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of IAWF. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Background

Many species use hollows or cavities that form in trees. The effect of an increasing fire frequency on hollow-bearing trees is unclear.

Aims

To predict the effects of increasing fire frequency on the abundance of hollow-bearing trees and identify how to make forests more resilient to these changes.

Methods

We simulated how increasing fire frequency will affect the abundance of hollow-bearing trees in forests of south-eastern Australia and conducted a sensitivity analysis to identify which variables affect these predictions.

Key results

Other things being equal, we found a negative relationship between the number of hollow-bearing trees and increasing fire frequency. However, we identified scenarios where the number of hollow-bearing trees remained stable, or increased, with frequent fires.

Conclusions

Hollow-bearing trees will decline where frequent fires co-occur with high rates at which trees collapse (or are removed) and/or where there are not a sufficient number of suitable mature trees in which new hollows can be excavated by fire.

Implications

The impact of increasing fire frequency on hollow-dependent fauna is likely to be greatest in forests where regeneration is inhibited, a large number of trees are removed before they form hollows, and/or where rates of collapse among trees is elevated.

Keywords: cavity, climate change, Eucalyptus, fire regime, forecasting, forests, simulation, tree hollows, wildfire.

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