Antinuclear

Typically, rainforest should be able to self-protect during fire, with closed canopies that allow little sunlight to the forest floor and that keep the vegetation moist. But the cyclones have shredded the canopies, leaving an excess of fuel from debris on the ground, and a lack of rain meant the forest was dry.

Since 22 November, more than 1m hectares has been burnt across Queensland, much of which lies in the tropics. Since the beginning of its bushfire season in August, more than 3.6m hectares have been destroyed.

The most recent fires occurred on a magnitude never before seen in the state. Over a period of 12 days, the Queensland fire and emergency service said it had attended more than 1,200 fires, with help from crews from every state and territory in Australia.

Andrew Piccone, a nature campaigner with the Australian Conservation Foundation, who did his studies in rainforest ecology, said that Australia would have to consider the future impact of warming conditions on a range of plant, animal and insect species in the wet tropics.

“If catastrophic fire conditions are going to burn the rainforest in Queensland, what that means for the future of the wet tropics world heritage area could be quite concerning,” he said………

Philip Stewart, a fire ecologist with Queensland University’s school of earth and environmental sciences, agrees. He said governments and communities would need to become more proactive in fighting fires and that current processes were too reactive.

“We do need to look at firefighting in a different light,” Stewart said. “We are a fire-prone country and more people are moving into fire-prone areas. We need to have an understanding of the danger of that and look at fighting fire with fire.

He pointed to traditional burning used by Indigenous communities as a model, where prescribed burning occurs on a larger scale than hazard-reduction burns, which focus on reducing fuel in specific areas.

Stewart said areas of rainforest impacted could take decades or even centuries to recover, adding that the next possible threat to those areas was mudslides as the wet season sets in.

“High-intensity fire tends to create a layer within the soil that is hydrophobic and therefore water repellent causing mass soil erosion,” he said.

“We are seeing this very phenomenon in the USA at Malibu where mass soil movement has taken place due to the heavy rains that followed the high-intensity and severe fires there.” https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/dec/09/australias-rainforest-under-threat-as-bushfires-rage-in-the-tropics