Fire and carbon management in a diversified rangelands economy: research, policy and implementation challenges for northern Australia

Abstract

Burning of savanna is a globally important source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In Australia, burning of savanna contributes between 2% and 4% annually of the nation’s reportable emissions. Complete removal of this source of emissions is unrealistic because fire is a ubiquitous natural process and important land-management tool. In the rangelands of northern Australia, fire is used to manage habitat for conservation, control woodland thickening, manipulate pastures for grazing and is an essential component of indigenous cultural and land-management practice. There has been a concerted attempt in recent times to move away from complete fire suppression and its consequence: frequent, extensive and high intensity wildfires occurring late in the dry season. In fire-adapted vegetation types, prescribed early dry season fires help reduce the incidence of late season wildfires and consequently the amount of GHG emissions produced. The emergence of a carbon economy affords a potential opportunity for land managers to diversify their livelihoods by adopting fire-management practices that reduce GHG emissions and increase carbon sequestration. However, in order to realise benefits from this emerging economy, there is a need to identify and address a range of barriers affecting community participation. The papers in this Special Issue document current scientific knowledge, policy issues and pathways to participation, with particular reference to Australia’s savanna rangelands. This introductory paper outlines how northern Australia has both the opportunity and requirement to develop a diversified rangelands economy to realise multiple conservation, economic and emissions outcomes.

Global fire emissions estimates during 1997–2016

“…According to GFED4s, total annual tropical savanna fire emissions averaged 4.9 Pg CO 2 , 6 Tg CH 4 , and 0. of annual emissions. Experiments with early burning in Australia have shown a potential reduction of up to 50 % (Walsh et al, 2014), but it is not known to what extent it is possible to use this approach in other regions, what the side effects will be, and whether some of the mitigation will be offset by higher CH 4 emission factors because early season fires may occur when fuels have had less time to cure. In Australia the latter is probably not the case (Meyer et al, 2012), but whether this is found in other regions remains to be investigated.…”

Quantifying the relative importance of greenhouse gas emissions from current and future savanna land use change across northern Australia

“…Attention has now turned to the productivity potential of the largely intact northern savanna landscapes, which will involve trade-offs between management of land and water resources for primary production and biodiversity conservation (Adams and Pressey, 2014;Grundy et al, 2016). Globally and in Australia, savanna fire ecology and fire-derived GHG emissions have been reasonably well researched (Beringer et al, 1995;Cook and Meyer, 2009;Livesley et al, 2011;Meyer et al, 2012;Walsh et al, 2014;van der Werf et al, 2010) and the impacts of fire on the functional ecology of the Australian savanna has been recently reviewed by Beringer et al (2015). In this study, we focussed on savanna deforestation and land preparation for agricultural use.…”

Changing Fire Regimes in Tropical and Subtropical Australia

“…This resulted in the increase of fuels and a change in fire regimes, with larger, higher intensity uncontrollable wildfires able to occur, which had a negative impact on native vegetation (Jurskis and Underwood 2013). Today fire is seen as an important and integral part of the natural ecosystem of tropical and semi-arid savannas and is used as a land management tool where possible (Walsh et al 2014). However pastoralists involved in the cattle industry require improved pastures through introduced grasses and this has resulted in a number of exotic grasses invading native tropical and semiarid ecosystems (Driscoll et al 2014).…”

“…Changes in fire regimes can also directly impact community composition and structure with studies showing that fire can be used to manage habitat for conservation and natural resource management (Walsh et al 2014) and that a reduction in fire frequency can directly impact ecosystem composition and structure by allowing vegetation thickening (i.e. expansion of woody taxa) and encroachment to occur (Sheuyange et al 2005;Jurskis 2012;Jurskis and Underwood 2013;Murphy et al 2014;Moss et al 2016).…”

“…To quantify vegetation cover change aerial photographs that are spatially identical and temporally different are ideal tools to assess gains or losses within vegetation types, as well as examine the impact of invasive species and/or ecological changes, such as vegetation thickening. However according to Walsh et al (2014) there are two issues that require further research, the variation in fire regimes and the need to record individual fires (i.e. both prescribed and unplanned) and the second is to understand patchiness of the burnt landscape.…”