Published works

Wildfires, and their associated management activities, can have complex social, economic, and environmental impacts. This chapter highlights some of the key impacts of wildfires in six sections. The first section about community focuses on relationships between recent destructive wildfires around the globe and losses to life and property. It also presents the main mechanisms of house loss in the Wildland-Urban Interface. Following that, a section about biodiversity impacts describes the major effects of wildfires and associated fire regimes on plants and animals, underlining both negative and positive effects. Then, the focus shifts to soil and water with a section that highlights how wildfires can have serious implications for downstream water quality and yield, posing a threat to water security for the people and aquatic wildlife. This is followed by a section about air quality, which describes the effect of wildfires on visibility, human health and their contribution to climate change. The next section highlights the role of dynamic fire behaviours that lead to the most severe impacts, describing the fire behaviours themselves and their frequency of occurrence. The chapter closes with a case study describing the extreme impacts of the 2019/2020 fire season in south-eastern Australia on people and the environment.