Journal article
Messmate stringybark: Bark ignitability and burning sustainability in relation to fragment dimensions, hazard score and time since fire
TE Penman, JG Cawson, S Murphy, TJ Duff
International Journal of Wildland Fire | CSIRO PUBLISHING | Published : 2017
DOI: 10.1071/WF16146
Abstract
Messmate stringybark is common in forests across south-eastern Australia. The bark of these trees is persistent and produces firebrands that contribute to house loss and the difficulty of fire suppression during wildfires. The trees typically survive fire with the amount of bark depleted. We compared two common methods to assess messmate bark fuels: (1) field-based hazard assessment, and (2) desk-based assessment using mapped time since fire. Our measurements included space-for-time field surveys and laboratory flammability tests. Although several physical properties of bark could be approximated from both assessment methods, some bark properties important to flammability were not captured. ..
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Funding Acknowledgements
This work was undertaken as part of a University of Melbourne Honours project. It was funded in part via the projects 'Managing bushfire in Tall Mist Forests - fuel hazard and moisture relationships' and 'iFER' (Integrated Forest and Ecosystem Research project), which were funded by the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. We acknowledge the valuable feedback received from two anonymous reviewers, and thank Miguel Cruz for his comments on this manuscript. T. E. Penman undertook the fieldwork, analysis and writing. J. G. Cawson and T. J. Duff supervised the research and contributed to writing and analysis. S. Murphy contributed to developing data collection methods.