What does climate change mean for those first two questions?
How do we weigh up the costs of prescribed fire, in terms of cost, impacts on fire-sensitive vegetation, native wildlife and human health from smoke, with its potential benefits of reduced bushfire impacts?
We found that cultural land management has many benefits and values, but the paradigm of risk may not be the best way to look at them.
Our approach uses a collection of climate models specifically designed to explore both wetter and drier futures—it’s worth noting that in all of the scenarios our planet is hotter.
As our climate warms, and if it dries, we can expect to see bigger and more intense bushfires, leading to more and more health impacts from smoke.
Studies and abstracts from article author:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-023-00432-0
The global health burden from wildfire smoke is expected to worsen under climate change, yet we lack quantitative estimates of the economic costs of increased mortality and hospital admissions for cardiovascular and respiratory conditions. Using a quantitative wildfire risk assessment framework and a 12-member climate model ensemble, we find a median increase in wildfire smoke health costs of 1–16% by 2070 across diverse landscapes in south-eastern Australia. Ensemble maximum cost increases (5–38%) often exceed abatements from fuel treatment, while costs decline moderately (0–7%) for the ensemble minimum. Unmitigated climate change will increase the health burden of wildfire smoke and undermine prescribed burning effectiveness.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378023000882?via%3Dihub
Fire management aims to change fire regimes. However, the challenge is to provide the optimal balance between the mitigation of risks to life and property, while ensuring a healthy environment and the protection of other key values in any given landscape. Incorporating cost-effectiveness and climate change impacts magnifies this task. We present an objective framework for quantitative comparison of the risk mitigation potential of alternative fuel treatment scenarios in south-eastern Australia. There is no single optimal strategy for all values in a given region, nor for any individual value in all regions. Trade-offs are required and cost-effectiveness is highly sensitive to the addition of management values. Climate change is likely to decrease prescribed burning effectiveness and increase total costs, therefore a rethink of best practice is required. Our study highlights the need for flexibility in the development and implementation of fire management strategies, which is something that risk-based approaches can provide. We discuss prospects of extending our framework to values for which we currently lack robust quantitative information and issues of compatibility with Aboriginal cultural burning and by implication other approaches that do not stem from within the prevailing fire management paradigm.
