Researchers working with the Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation have completed a comprehensive analysis of fire and vegetation patterns spanning 1,000 years at Croajingolong National Park in Gippsland, Victoria. The study, published in Nature, examined pollen and charcoal particles extracted from sediment cores at Purghagoolah, a lake surrounded by forest, to reconstruct historical landscape changes and their relationship to fire activity.
The findings indicate that European colonisation fundamentally altered the landscape’s fire dynamics through significant land use changes. Prior to colonisation, the area was an actively managed landscape maintained by the Gunaikurnai people through cultural burning practices. Following the removal of Indigenous people from their Country and the cessation of these management practices, the landscape transitioned from open woodland to dense forest, creating conditions for more severe fires.
Michael-Shawn Fletcher, the study’s lead author from the University of Melbourne, explained that this transformation created what researchers describe as a “catastrophic wildfire loop.” The loss of traditional burning practices allowed shrub coverage to increase, which intensified fires. These hotter fires subsequently triggered eucalypt recruitment and expansion, which further increased fire intensity and frequency. Importantly, these land use changes preceded climate change impacts by more than a century.
Cultural burning, a fire management approach employed by First Nations peoples, uses low-temperature fires applied at appropriate times and locations to maintain landscapes safely and productively. This method differs substantially from mainstream prescribed burning conducted by government agencies. Fletcher emphasised that the research provides scientific validation for integrating Indigenous knowledge and cultural burning practices into contemporary fire management strategies.
David Bowman, a fire scientist at the University of Tasmania, characterised the research as significant and noted it contributes to growing recognition of how the loss of Indigenous fire management has shaped landscape conditions. He identified the long-term records as critically important for understanding how historical fire regimes interact with contemporary climate drivers and for addressing fundamental questions in wildfire science about the unprecedented nature of current fire events.
Article Attribution | Read More at Article Source
Article summary produced by Claude AI