Patchiness of prescribed burns in dry sclerophyll eucalypt forests in South-eastern Australia

Abstract

Prescribed burning is commonly used in eucalypt forests to reduce fire risk and minimize damage to people and property in the event of a wildfire. The dry sclerophyll forests of south-eastern Australia are naturally fire-prone. Little is known about the heterogeneity of prescribed fires in these forests. This paper reports on the spatial variability of repeated low intensity fires under two burning regimes, in both logged and unlogged forests, for a 17-year period from 1988 to 2005. Prescribed burns were extremely patchy at both the coupe and the plot scale for all treatments. Burns implemented soon after logging covered significantly greater areas than the standard prescribed burns. On the ..