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Fire

The increasing density of shrubs and trees across a landscape

Woody thickening is a global phenomenon whereby the density of trees and woody shrubs is increasing in the landscape. Although most commonly seen in arid and semi-arid landscapes, it also occurs in other environments. This process has a number of impacts on landscape function. Woody thickening can be a naturally occurring phenomenon but is being enhanced by climate change, changes in fire regimes and other human land use activity. Woody thickening influences carbon storage and (more)...

Maximising woodlands bird diversity in Brigalow Belt forests

Final report

The Brigalow Belt is a national biodiversity hotspot, and its extensive forests and woodlands are potentially significant refugia for fragmentation-sensitive birds, but our understanding of optimal management for biodiversity conservation and the specific threats facing woodland birds in the area is limited. In particular, management of the aggressive noisy miner is a major challenge throughout the region, despite the species typically being associated with fragmented landscapes. This project aimed to (more)...

Impacts of Plantation Age, Fire and Disturbance on Catchment Yield

The problem of sustainable water resource management is a key issue confronting Australia in the 21st century. Increasing demand through increased population size, declining rainfall across parts of temperate Australia and consequently an increasing need to allocate water to maintain ecosystem health and ecosystem service provision are the dominant threats to the maintenance of an adequate supply of water to urban, peri-urban and rural communities.

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Mallee Fire and Biodiversity Project

Determining appropriate fire regimes in the Murray Mallee

Project Aim:

To identify the properties of habitat mosaics produced by fire that enhance the persistence and status of a broad range of taxonomic groups (birds, mammals, reptiles, key invertebrates and plants) in eucalypt-dominated mallee habitats.

Fire regimes and biodiversity conservation in the Murray Mallee region

Fire is a major process that shapes the composition and structure of Mallee ecosystems. Ecological burning is commonly used as a management tool in the Murray Mallee to create a diversity of post-fire age-classes, promote patchiness during wildfire and to prevent large, intense fires that homogenise the landscape. Fire management is increasingly focused on maintaining heterogenous fire mosaics of differing fire history under the assumption that ‘pyrodiversity begets biodiversity’. This (more)...

Fire, fragmentation and small mammals; synergistic impacts on ecosystem dynamics

There is currently an important and unique opportunity to examine this question in some detail in southwestern Australia by using a mixture of natural and targeted experiementation. A series of sites is available within which native mammal populations have been reintroduced or have increased recently due to predator control. There are also sites that have been subjected to either no fire or known fire treatments in the recent past, and also areas that are likely to be burned in the near future. We (more)...
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Thinking Bush - Issue 6

Vegetation reporting and monitoring

Articles in this issue by the National Land & Water Resources Audit (the Audit) and the Bureau of Rural Science (BRS) emphasise the need for nationally consistent information collation and reporting mechanisms. All states and territories have invested considerable time and effort to describe, map and better understand their vegetation extent and composition. Through a collaborative effort with the states, territories and supporting (more)...

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Thinking Bush - Issue 3

Science for managing native vegetation in Australian landscapes

An occasional magazine from Land & Water Australia’s Native Vegetation Program that is full of new ways of thinking about, planning and managing the Australian Bush. This issue’s theme - Managing native vegetation in agricultural landscapes