articles on burning issues
Answers
Answered by
1
Searing winds, soaring temperatures and smouldering homes — it's summer in Sydney and the suburbs are besieged. In recent months, Australia's largest city has been hemmed by wildfires. Highways have been closed, power lines severed, and scores of houses destroyed.
The need to protect urban areas from incineration is just one reason why fire science is a hot issue in Australia. Much of the country's unique flora and fauna has evolved with fire, coming to depend on the bush periodically going up in flames. But across large tracts of the country, established rhythms of fire and regrowth have been altered by human activities, in some cases stoking uncontrollable conflagrations that threaten lives, property and biodiversity.
Burning issues
Heated debate: researchers such as Jim Gould (above) are desperately trying to find out more about fire's behaviour. Among other questions, they want to investigate the value of controlled burning.
Fighting fire with fire may offer the best solution. Controlled fires can be used to reduce the build-up of flammable vegetation, and might also mimic the natural cycles of scorching and regrowth needed to maintain biodiversity. But if fires are to become an effective land-management and conservation tool, scientists must improve their understanding of how complex fire regimes have shaped Australia's ecosystems. "We need a good understanding of how fire behaves in the landscape," says Jim Gould, a bushfire expert with the Forestry and Forest Products Division of the CSIRO, Australia's main national research agency, in Canberra.
But the residents of Sydney and other Australian cities have more pressing concerns. As cities have expanded into bushland, more and more urban dwellers have found themselves living in an extremely vulnerable position. "In Sydney, about 300,000 hectares lie at this urban–bush boundary," says Ross Bradstock, a fire ecologist with the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Recent decades have unleashed some ferocious blazes — 16 February 1983 is remembered as 'Ash Wednesday', after fires swept through the states of Victoria and South Australia, killing 76 people and destroying more than 2,500 homes. During the fires of 1994's dry season in Sydney, four died and about 180 houses were lost. And the fires that threatened Sydney in December 2001 destroyed more than 100 homes.
The need to protect urban areas from incineration is just one reason why fire science is a hot issue in Australia. Much of the country's unique flora and fauna has evolved with fire, coming to depend on the bush periodically going up in flames. But across large tracts of the country, established rhythms of fire and regrowth have been altered by human activities, in some cases stoking uncontrollable conflagrations that threaten lives, property and biodiversity.
Burning issues
Heated debate: researchers such as Jim Gould (above) are desperately trying to find out more about fire's behaviour. Among other questions, they want to investigate the value of controlled burning.
Fighting fire with fire may offer the best solution. Controlled fires can be used to reduce the build-up of flammable vegetation, and might also mimic the natural cycles of scorching and regrowth needed to maintain biodiversity. But if fires are to become an effective land-management and conservation tool, scientists must improve their understanding of how complex fire regimes have shaped Australia's ecosystems. "We need a good understanding of how fire behaves in the landscape," says Jim Gould, a bushfire expert with the Forestry and Forest Products Division of the CSIRO, Australia's main national research agency, in Canberra.
But the residents of Sydney and other Australian cities have more pressing concerns. As cities have expanded into bushland, more and more urban dwellers have found themselves living in an extremely vulnerable position. "In Sydney, about 300,000 hectares lie at this urban–bush boundary," says Ross Bradstock, a fire ecologist with the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Recent decades have unleashed some ferocious blazes — 16 February 1983 is remembered as 'Ash Wednesday', after fires swept through the states of Victoria and South Australia, killing 76 people and destroying more than 2,500 homes. During the fires of 1994's dry season in Sydney, four died and about 180 houses were lost. And the fires that threatened Sydney in December 2001 destroyed more than 100 homes.
Similar questions