Implications of the 2019–2020 megafires for the biogeography and conservation of Australian vegetation
Godfree, Robert C., Knerr, Nunzio, Encinas-Viso, Francisco, Albrecht, David, Bush, David, Cargill, D. Christine, Clements, Mark, Gueidan, Cécile, Guja, Lydia K., Harwood, Tom, Joseph, Leo, Lepschi, Brendan, Schulte, Katharina, Schmidt-Lebuhn, Alexander, and Broadhurst, Linda M. (2021) Implications of the 2019–2020 megafires for the biogeography and conservation of Australian vegetation. Nature Communications, 12. 1023.
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Abstract
Australia's 2019–2020 'Black Summer' bushfires burnt more than 8 million hectares of vegetation across the south-east of the continent, an event unprecedented in the last 200 years. Here we report the impacts of these fires on vascular plant species and communities. Using a map of the fires generated from remotely sensed hotspot data we show that, across 11 Australian bioregions, 17 major native vegetation groups were severely burnt, and up to 67–83% of globally significant rainforests and eucalypt forests and woodlands. Based on geocoded species occurrence data we estimate that >50% of known populations or ranges of 816 native vascular plant species were burnt during the fires, including more than 100 species with geographic ranges more than 500 km across. Habitat and fire response data show that most affected species are resilient to fire. However, the massive biogeographic, demographic and taxonomic breadth of impacts of the 2019–2020 fires may leave some ecosystems, particularly relictual Gondwanan rainforests, susceptible to regeneration failure and landscape-scale decline.
| Item ID: | 70008 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 2041-1723 |
| Keywords: | Biogeography, Climate-change ecology, Fire ecology |
| Copyright Information: | © Crown 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Date Deposited: | 24 Nov 2021 04:40 |
| FoR Codes: | 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3104 Evolutionary biology > 310402 Biogeography and phylogeography @ 20% 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4101 Climate change impacts and adaptation > 410102 Ecological impacts of climate change and ecological adaptation @ 30% 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410401 Conservation and biodiversity @ 50% |
| SEO Codes: | 19 ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY, CLIMATE CHANGE AND NATURAL HAZARDS > 1905 Understanding climate change > 190504 Effects of climate change on Australia (excl. social impacts) @ 30% 18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1806 Terrestrial systems and management > 180604 Rehabilitation or conservation of terrestrial environments @ 30% 19 ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY, CLIMATE CHANGE AND NATURAL HAZARDS > 1904 Natural hazards > 190401 Climatological hazards (e.g. extreme temperatures, drought and wildfires) @ 40% |
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