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Bushfire - Australia (1 Viewer)

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Needs a password, unfortunately
Strange - possibly just "like" the ABC LandLine page to get access to the post. It is essentially the same footage as Viator linked, but gives better perspective as the footage is better cropped and resized for portrait display on a mobile phone.

The worrying/comforting thing is that conditions aren't really ultra bad - stronger winds and higher temperatures would see all these fires go 'catastrophic'

With the volatile oils and vapours given off by the eucalypts, in these conditions the air just explodes in flame from ground level to 300 to 500 ft high depending on the height of the trees.

The fire fronts are now joining to create 'megafires' .....
https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-06/nsw-bushfires-mega-fire-north-of-sydney/11772568





Chosun :gh:
 
Controlled burns destroy ecosystems and may not reduce fire risk

Very interesting interview that debunks accepted myths and raises a whole lot of new questions ..... :cat:

With fires across five Australian states, debate rages about our fire management of forests. Some call for more controlled burning during cooler months, thinking this will decrease the rate of uncontrolled fires. Professor Kinsley Dixon explains, so-called "prescribed burning, produces a more flammable system" in the first years after a fire, and says research shows "there are devastating effects on the natural ecology".

https://www.abc.net.au/radionationa...qRTxEDf8i2Tgo8kLm4sXlS_V2z79WC7j3N9N67sW_ApMY


The exponentially increasing interface between inhabited assets and natural areas (many thus being degraded because of fringe effects, and other issues such as ruined hydrology, etc) then becomes a huge problem of our own making ......





Chosun :gh:
 
This is simply not true. Whilst some ppl involved in fighting fires have started them - a problem over a long time in many countries with individuals obsessed by fire. Your assumption that it's unemployed doing it to get employment is false for the simple reason outside of Australian cities and where the vast majority of the fires are the fire fighters are all volunteers and no remuneration is involved.
I wasn't referring specifically to the Aussie fires. What I said is true here in Canada and also in the USA.
 
As an aside, this disaster has reminded me of the woeful geographical grasp of many Brits. I'm up in Queensland (nr Cairns) but still getting concerned messages from (some) friends asking if I'm OK and whether the fires are close by.
 
As an aside, this disaster has reminded me of the woeful geographical grasp of many Brits. I'm up in Queensland (nr Cairns) but still getting concerned messages from (some) friends asking if I'm OK and whether the fires are close by.

My best example of that came from a group conversation when someone commented disparagingly about a Canadian chap she and her husband had met, because amazingly the Canadian hadn't met their friend who lived in Canada...

The said Canadian lived in Newfoundland, while their friend had emigrated to Vancouver...
MJB
Merry Christmas, John!
 
As an aside, this disaster has reminded me of the woeful geographical grasp of many Brits. I'm up in Queensland (nr Cairns) but still getting concerned messages from (some) friends asking if I'm OK and whether the fires are close by.

I wouldn't worry about it. I've never been to Australia and don't know where the main cities are. When I was in America I was asked if we had buses in the UK.

As long as you know where you are.
 
You mean the link doesn't mention it? Are you suggesting something else? Climate change (eg drought(s) caused by a number of factors) would seem a fairly obvious major factor to an outside observer, as mentioned in the article.

Yes. Absolutely. 100%.

None of those Scientists and Experts have really got a clue.

The real cause of the fires (apart from the combination of high temperatures, catastrophic wind conditions, and 87% of fires being deliberately, or accidently lit or caused by man) is the ruined hydrological cycle.

Yes we've had years long drought, but in the geological record there are droughts that stretched for a few decades ~ 30 years ! ..... and Indigenous People managed to survive that.

The hydrological cycle has been ruined right from the arrival of the British, European Stock, and Inappropriate farming methods. In as little as 10-15 years wetlands and chain of ponds systems were ruined. Creeks and rivers became eroded and incised, wetlands and floodplains were drained and dried. Some of this destruction took place deliberately under the guise of Government sponsored programs. Moist vegetation was cleared and the daily local evapo-transpiration cycle lost.

Further to this increasing destruction has been the corporate pillaging of the water resource, diversions, floodplain harvesting and basically exceeding the capacity of the land. There are several thousand bone dry kilometers of riverbed throughout the Murray Darling system - an area as big as France and Germany combined is a giant denuded dried oven. Add to this the cutting and loss of groundwater aquifers through Mining, Fracking, Coal Seam Gas Extraction, and Underground Coal Seam Combustion. This destruction has increased exponentially over the last several decades.

So what does all this mean?

It means that Australia was categorically the most magnificently efficient water conservation ecosystem ever invented.
Water didn't usually sit (apart from flood years) in open waterways and lakes. It sat in the ground. In the soil sponge, and in the vegetation - sheltered from massive rates of evaporation.
Even in droughts that soil sponge would drip water drop by drop - drip drip drip - keeping wetlands full, and creeks and rivers flowing.

What this meant was that plains and the valley floors exhibited positive groundwater pressure - keeping the soil and vegetation moist (and shaded before widespread clearing) - and importantly also keeping the groundwater table under the hills and mountains raised and accessible to the vegetation. The moisture cycle was intact and virtually 100% efficient. I have measured temperatures fully ~15°C below the ambient 40-odd under the shade of old growth eucalypts bordering fully functioning emphemeral wetlands. Such things provided natural barriers to natural (lightning ignited) fires from becoming runaway conflagrations.

This is all ruined. The water table dropped. The vegetation dried and in drought stress. The soil sponge dried and ruined. Soil carbon lost and blown away on the wind leaving a bare hard dry claypan devoid of biological activity and fertility. The temperatures of all environments has increased - even wet forests. Natural rates of composting and moist soil formation have all but ceased. Instead dried loose vegetative matter (shed bark, leaves etc) fuel loads just build and build.

This is the real cause of the fires.

We now have the ridiculous situation of wetlands and refugia actually burning. Make no mistake - this exact same process is already in play in Western North America, and Britain too as fires that should never have happened have burnt over recent years.





Chosun :gh:
 
~Half a Billion Animals Feared Dead From Australia’s Fires, Including 8,000 Koalas

https://themindunleashed.com/2019/1...2Z6S7AQ_rcaHEVw3dhTcBmhupbNJHNiTiJ_OXG435VFd4

Basically, by the time the day is out and 2019 ends we will have burnt every square centimetre of a country something like the size of Lithuania down.

Many of the fires will still be out of control and only the Pacific Ocean, or solid soaking rain will put them out - which is not likely for weeks ......

Prime Minister Scott Morrison saw fit to take a lovely little jaunt to Hawaii for holidays while all this was going on, reviving the much laughed about here catchphrase from an old tourism campaign - #wherethebloodyhellareya ..... ! :-O

This bloke is such a complete and utter boofhead and dimwit that he makes Boris Johnson look like Einstein, and Donald Trump look like Greta Thunberg ................ :eek!:






Chosun :gh:
 
Maybe folks missed it when I said that we'd just burnt the 120th biggest country in the world (Lithuania) completely to the ground ...... :eek!:





Chosun :gh:
 
Tips for managing land and helping wildlife after a fire

https://www.nature.org.au/blog/2019...Wgll3Okw9Q2ohfXacTAv25WfrIm7zLXpNF-wLHhMCVIxY

Some good advice - except the bit about weeds. Don't spray them. Weeds are just colonizer species making the most of the opportunity. In the absence of other vegetation that might be all the shelter there is for birds and animals. Before they set seed slash them (after making sure nothing is breeding in them) and the waste will add vital organic matter to the soil as it breaks down. :t:



Chosun :gh:
 
Appreciate the explanation Chosun - however depressing it is . . .

So sad to see this happening.

Hoping for some relief and that this becomes a wake-up call for those in Government who manage Australia's environment.

Cheers
Mike
 
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Appreciate the explanation Chosun - however depressing it is . . .

So sad to see this happening.

Hoping for some relief and that this becomes a wake-up call for those in Government who manage Australia's environment.

Cheers
Mike

Mike it's mainly the ruined hydrological cycle.
Part of that is unsuitable European practices, but a big part of it is the over extraction of resources (water, old-growth forest, soil fertility, minerals - leaving behind hydrological moonscapes, land, etc) - and that is something that the government all too readily endorses.

This is mother earth saying she's had enough.

Unfortunately even this won't wake them up .....




Chosun :gh:
 
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