New online - June 2021

New reports and journal articles on CRC research have been published in the last month. Read the details below in June’s wrap up.

CRC reports

The final report from the Positive mental health in young adult emergency services personnel project, completed as part of the CRC’s Tactical Research Fund, has been written by the research team—Dr Amanda Taylor (University of Adelaide), Dr Jane Cocks (University of Adelaide), Prof Sharon Lawn (Flinders University), Prof David Lawrence (University of Western Australia), Wavne Rikkers (University of Western Australia), Dr Louise Roberts (Flinders University), A/Prof Maureen Ashe (University of British Columbia), Prof Alexander McFarlane (University of Adelaide), A/Prof Rachel Roberts (University of Adelaide), Prof Paul Delfabbro (University of Adelaide), Holly Caruso (University of Adelaide) and A/Prof Miranda Van Hooff (Military and Emergency Services Health Australia).

The overall aim of the project was to understand what can be done at an individual, local and organisation-wide level to minimise the short- and long-term impacts of potentially traumatising events and to support and promote good mental health and wellbeing for young adult volunteers in emergency service organisations. The project report presents information and outcomes for the project objectives and provides recommendations for agency-based implementation of the proposed Wellbeing Framework for Young Fire and Emergency Service Volunteers. The mental health and wellbeing resources developed through the project, including the Care4Guide, can be accessed here. Read more about the research, key findings and the resources in Hazard Note 98.

Findings from a suite of quick response projects led by Dr James Furlaud and Prof David Bowman from the University of Tasmania—Remeasurement of Burnt TERN Ausplots in New South Wales, Remeasurement of burnt permanent plots in Tasmanian wet eucalypt forest – 2019 and Immediate post-fire vegetation re-measurement of TERN plots burnt during 2015/16 fire season—have been published in the report, Understanding post-fire fuel dynamics using burnt permanent forest plots.

These series of projects measured Terrestrial Ecology Research Network (TERN) Forest Ausplots of wet eucalypt forests across Tasmania and NSW that burned in different bushfires and planned burns between 2016 and 2020.The main goals of these studies were to obtain empirical measurements of fuel load, structure and hazard within the first two years after a fire to complement the measurements of fuel loads taken directly before the fires. This allowed the research team to not only precisely quantify the fuel loads consumed by a range of fires, but also provides a baseline measurement of fuel loads. This baseline can be used to anchor measurements of fuel accumulation in wet eucalypt forests that are part of related CRC studies attempting to measure both the effects of climate and stand age on fuel accumulation in wet forests. This study revealed that a consistent effect of low-moderate severity fires in tall, wet Eucalyptus forests is to kill, but not consume, the fire-sensitive understorey due to the effect of heat. This resulted in a new deposition of fine surface fuels (leaf litter) within the first 10 months after a fire, and substantial amount of dead standing coarse fuels, which will eventually fall to the surface. Read more here.

Journal articles

Relating to the Scientific diversity and uncertainty in risk mitigation policy and planning project is research by Dr Jessica Weir (Western Sydney University), Dr Timothy Neale (Deakin University) and Elizabeth Clarke, published in Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. The recalibration of our relationships with science (and nature) by natural hazard risk mitigation practitioners presents a synthesis of practitioner experiences from three consequential bushfire and flood risk landscapes in Australia in which science was being used to change policy and/or practice. The paper argues for structural and procedural change to address legacy pathways that automatically privilege science, especially in relation to nature, with broader relevance for other environmental issues.

Continental-scale prediction of live fuel moisture content using soil moisture information was written by Dr Vinod Kumar, Dr Imtiaz Dharssi and Dr Paul Fox Hughes from the Bureau of Meteorology, along with A/Prof Marta Yebra from the Australian National University. Published in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology and relating to the Improving land dryness measures and forecasts and Mapping bushfire hazard and impacts projects, the paper analyses the live fuel moisture content-soil moisture (LFMC-SM) relationship over Australia using gridded, remote sensing-based LFMC and land surface model-based SM products. The results from the study highlight a modelling strategy that can be used to address a critical gap in the forecast of spatially and temporally continuous LFMC at regional scales in advance for operational fire management applications.