Fire Regime Sensitivity to Global Climate Change: An Australian Perspective

The Australian eucalypt forests are highly adapted to fire, and their component species possess well-developed response mechanisms that ensure post-fire recovery of these ecosystems. Fire regimes, which may alter forest floristics and structure, have changed since pre-European times because of management practices and may again change because of a changing climate. Two complimentary approaches are used to determine spatial and temporal patterns of fire regimes, a) dendrochronology to determine pre- and post-European fire histories for specific sites and b) fire-climate-landscape modelling to predict spatial patterns in fire regimes for topographically complex landscapes. This paper brings together these two approaches which have been applied independently to the same forest in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales. The model predictions of spatial patterns in fire regimes under the present climate provide reasonable results when compared with observed site fire histories. Also, model results indicate that around half of the landscape is likely to experience a significant increase in fire frequency as a result of climate change. These findings, which have implications for fire-prone forest environments world-wide, are discussed in relation to the effects that anthropogenic ignition have had on the fire frequency in the study area over the last century.