In 2013, a ferocious fire destroyed a small seaside village east of Hobart, Australia, the city where I live and work as a pyrogeographer. A newspaper photograph captured the terror of the firestorm: in it, a family shelters under a jetty in surreal, smoky orange twilight. Last week, spookily similar images from Greece, where people […]
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For most people, every breath comes without a thought. But for some, taking in the outdoor air and scenery can literally be breathtaking. Through creative work and research Associate Professor Fay Johnston and her team have created a smartphone app to help bring simplicity back to breathing for Australians with asthma, hay fever and other lung conditions. […]
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For the first time, researchers at the University of Tasmania have modelled how effective certain types of prescribed burning scenarios are in reducing wildfire risk at a regional scale. In the largest simulation study of its kind, the effectiveness of a range of hypothetical prescribed burning treatments was evaluated across Tasmania over a five-year period. […]
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Professor David Bowman’s seminal 2009 paper on the role of fire in shaping Earth’s ecology has been cited well over 800 times, but as he straps his bikes on the car, preparing for another brief soiree into the Tasmanian bush, the world expert on fire ecology has no time for self-congratulation. Instead, Professor Bowman explains […]
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University of Tasmania Professor of Environmental Change Biology David Bowman led an international collaboration – including researchers from the University of Idaho and South Dakota State University – to compile a global satellite database of the intensity of 23 million landscape fires used to identify 478 of the most extreme wildfire events. “Extreme fire events […]
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Regeneration after bushfires could be compromised by climate change, new research shows. Scientists from the University of Tasmania’s School of Natural Sciences looked at how certain chemicals, produced by bushfires and crucial to stimulating new plant growth, respond to warming temperatures. In particular, researchers studied karrikins, which are among the most important group of chemicals which […]
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Fifty years on, mystery still surrounds the origin of the iconic button grass plains of south west Tasmania. Situated across western Tasmania and occupying much of the World Heritage Area, ecologists and scientists have been divided for half a century over whether these landscapes naturally evolve or are created by fire management practices. “In 1968, […]
Read More A real-world experiment drawing on the concept of renewal ecology to help explore the relationship between fire and herbivore activity in Tasmania’s Midlands will be carried out this month. Researchers from the University of Tasmania’s School of Natural Sciences, in collaboration with Bush Heritage Australia, will conduct a unique field experiment at Beaufront, a privately-owned […]
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