Monitoring and research
| Flora monitoring The Flora monitoring protocols for planned burning: a user’s guide is an important part of the toolkit being developed to assist the planned burning program in Victoria. The planned burning program aims to employ fire for the dual objectives of fuel reduction and desirable ecosystem outcomes. The protocols are designed to help people better understand the relationship between fire and flora species and will ultimately help DSE and Parks Victoria to manage more adaptively. The protocols provide a consistent methodology for monitoring the effects of planned fire on flora. They explain how to specify monitoring objectives, select sites, train field assessors, collate and analyse data and tailor land and fire management accordingly. In the future the protocols will be complemented by monitoring protocols for fuels, fauna, habitat and fire behaviour. The protocols are supported by a fire monitoring database called Argus and a rationale report (Flora monitoring protocols for planned burning: a rationale report). The rationale report explains the reasoning behind the methodologies chosen in the protocols. The protocols are currently being used by DSE and Parks Victoria staff throughout Victoria. While land and fire agencies will be the main users of the protocols, they are likely to be of great interest to community groups who may like to use them to conduct monitoring for their own conservation and management activities or interests. |  |
Fauna monitoring
The tools above (Flora Monitoring) enable the inclusion of ecological considerations in fire planning focus on vegetation management (flora). However it is recgonised that managing for flora requirements only may not meet the needs of all fauna. Of particular concern are rare and threatened species.
DSE is currently developing tools which will facilitate the incorporation of fauna requirements in fire planning.
For more information about other fauna monitoring research visit the Mallee Fire & Biodiversity Project website.
Future fire management
In order to restore and re-balance ecosystems, while protecting human life and property, fire management agencies need to continue to improve their approaches to managing fire in the landscape. In particular, fire management needs to provide the right mix of fire types across both public and private land.
However, the effect of an ecologically-based fire regime on the fire behaviour and spread of a large fire needs to be better understood. Likewise the impact of a purely asset protection based fire regime on biodiversity or timber and water quality and quantity needs to be better understood.
The future fire management project aims to address these issues by providing recommendations on a methodology for defining and evaluating landscape-scale fire management options. The methodology will aim to deliver desirable outcomes for sustaining biodiversity and ecosystem services (eg. timber and water quantity and quality), as well as meeting community needs for protecting human life and property.
This project is a core component of the “Managing the Land with Fire” theme of the Victorian Bushfire Strategy. It will address its aims by using two pilot study areas (the Otways and Central Highlands).