Monitoring the impact of prescribed burns

Owen Gooding and Todd Chaudhry from Community Safety record GPS coordinates for pre-burn flora survey work on Melbourne Water-managed land at Silvan

by Owen Gooding, CFA Community Safety

CFA staff have been helping DSE and Parks Victoria with pre-prescribed burn flora surveys in the Dandenong ranges.

The surveys were undertaken using new flora monitoring protocols for prescribed burning. The protocols were developed by Victorian public land managers to provide ecological input into planning prescribed burns by measuring changes before and after fires.

The interaction between fire and native plants and animals functioning as an ecosystem is very complex. The idea behind the monitoring protocols is to help land and burn managers learn from past experience and use this knowledge to improve fire management practices.

The monitoring protocols are also intended for use in burns on private land and on road reserves. The flora survey has been designed for use by non-flora specialists so that interested members of the community and fire brigades may contribute to the knowledge of fire ecology.

CFA Environment Program Manager Helen Bull says the monitoring protocol is one of a number of tools and scientific studies overseen by the Victorian Fire Ecology Working Group, of which CFA is a member.

For more information contact Helen Bull on h.bull@cfa.vic.gov.au