Marshall Erica, Keem Jessica L, Penman Trent D, Di Stefano Julian
FLARE Wildfire Research, The University of Melbourne, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
Fire Ecology and Biodiversity Group, The University of Melbourne, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, Creswick, VIC, Australia.
J Environ Manage. 2025 Jan;373:123731. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.123731. Epub 2024 Dec 14.
Climate change is resulting in larger, more frequent, and more severe wildfires which have increasingly negative impacts on people and the environment. Under these circumstances, it is critical to determine whether fire management actions can mitigate biodiversity impacts under future fire regimes. However, it is currently unclear how changing climate and management interact to influence the spatial distribution of risks to biodiversity. We used fire simulations to quantify the influence of 13 fuel management strategies on animal biodiversity in the Otways, southeastern Australia, under four alternative climate scenarios. Our management strategies include combinations of prescribed burning, mulching, and strategic fuel breaks modelled in various spatial configurations and frequencies. We assessed the capacity of treatments to reduce risk of fire to animal biodiversity by quantifying changes to extent burnt, wildfire frequency and wildfire severity. All management strategies reduced the average annual area burnt across the landscape, however, there was considerable variability over time and under different climate models. Similarly, spatial shifts in fire frequency and severity in some cases resulted in the shifting of fires away from some areas of high value to animals. There is no one size fits all management strategy for reducing impacts to biodiversity under variable future climates. However, all the strategies tested here reduced median impacts relative to a do-nothing approach for at least some aspects of the fire regime or for animal biodiversity. We highlight the importance of evaluating fire management effectiveness against a range of metrics to ensure multiple objectives are met under the increasingly unknown climate conditions we can expect going forward.
气候变化正导致更大、更频繁且更严重的野火，这些野火对人类和环境产生了越来越大的负面影响。在这种情况下，确定火灾管理行动能否减轻未来火灾形势下对生物多样性的影响至关重要。然而，目前尚不清楚不断变化的气候与管理如何相互作用以影响生物多样性面临的风险的空间分布。我们利用火灾模拟来量化13种燃料管理策略在四种不同气候情景下对澳大利亚东南部奥特韦地区动物生物多样性的影响。我们的管理策略包括规定燃烧、覆盖和战略性燃料隔离带的组合，这些策略以各种空间配置和频率进行建模。我们通过量化火烧面积、野火频率和野火严重程度的变化，评估了这些处理措施降低动物生物多样性火灾风险的能力。所有管理策略都减少了整个景观的年均火烧面积，然而，随着时间的推移以及在不同气候模型下，存在相当大的变异性。同样，在某些情况下，火灾频率和严重程度的空间转移导致火灾从一些对动物具有高价值的区域转移开。对于在未来多变的气候条件下减少对生物多样性的影响，没有一种适用于所有情况的管理策略。然而，相对于不采取任何措施的做法，这里测试的所有策略至少在火灾形势或动物生物多样性的某些方面都降低了中位数影响。我们强调了针对一系列指标评估火灾管理有效性的重要性，以确保在我们预期的日益不确定的气候条件下实现多个目标。
