Rangeland Ecology & Management

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Grassland Fire Management in Future Climate
Author
Sullivan, A L
Publisher
Elsevier Inc.
Publication Year
2010
Body

A thorough understanding of the behavior of fire in grasslands is critical to the minimization of the impact of fires on agricultural and pastoral land as well as the successful management of the health, robustness, and species diversity of native grasslands. This is also necessary to understand the impact that a changing climate will have on these fires and the subsequent impacts and adaptation steps needed to protect valuable farmland and grassland ecosystems in the future, a challenge that will soon be facing all land managers. While a number of studies have investigated the impact of climate change on fire danger indices, the fire danger systems used in Australia are actually fire weather indices that provide no information about the likely impact of climate change on fire behavior. This chapter summarizes the state of the knowledge of fire behavior in grass fuels and discusses in detail the factors that influence the behavior of grassfires. The CSIRO Grassland Fire Spread Meter is the recommended operational system for the prediction of grassfire behavior in all Australian grass types. The system is used to assess the impact of a high-emission climate change scenario upon the likely behavior of grassfires throughout the fire season for three major pastoral and agricultural regions of eastern Australia in 2020 and 2050. It was found that mean fire rate of forward spread in ungrazed/natural pastures will increase by a maximum of 10% by 2020 and by 32% by 2050 in southeastern Australia. The implications for grassland management strategies and possible climate adaptation pathways are explored.

Language
English
Resource Type
Text
Document Type
Book
Book Title
Advances in Agronomy
Keywords
fire
grasslands
management
species richness
climate change
fire ecology
agriculture
pastoralism
southern Africa