The ACEAS working group has developed a framework to evaluate the extent to which fire regimes are driven by climate and other environmental variables, and whether these fire and environment relationships concord with: (a) predictions of the group of conceptual models recently developed; and (b) predictions of process-based models. The dataset provides a distribution of major fire regimes niches throughout Australia ordered according to decreasing annual net primary productivity. The dataset published is the distribution of major fire regimes niches throughout Australia.
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We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
This work was funded by ACEAS, a facility of Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), an Australian Government National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) project.
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To broadly characterise Australia’s fire regimes, we reclassified a continental-scale vegetation map, defining classes based on typical fuel (e.g. litter, grass, shrubs) and fire types (e.g. surface, crown, and ground). Classes were intersected with a broad climate classification to derive a map of twenty broad fire regimes. Using expert elicitation and a literature search, we validated each fire regime and characterised typical and extreme fire intensities and return intervals. Satellite-derived active fire detections were used to determine seasonal patterns of fire activity within fire regimes.
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