Implications of the 2019–2020 megafires for the biogeography and conservation of Australian vegetation

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 12; no. 1; p. 1023
• Main Authors: Godfree, Robert C., Knerr, Nunzio, Encinas-Viso, Francisco, Albrecht, David, Bush, David, Christine Cargill, D., Clements, Mark, Gueidan, Cécile, Guja, Lydia K., Harwood, Tom, Joseph, Leo, Lepschi, Brendan, Nargar, Katharina, Schmidt-Lebuhn, Alexander, Broadhurst, Linda M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 15-02-2021; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 631/158/2165; 631/158/2465; 631/158/852; Australia; Biogeography; Catastrophic failure analysis; Climate change; Conservation; Conservation of Natural Resources - methods; Environmental changes; Fires; Flora; Flowers & plants; Forests; Gondwana; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Indigenous species; multidisciplinary; Plant communities; Plant diversity; Plant species; Plants; Rainforest; Rainforests; Regeneration; Remote sensing; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Seasons; Vegetation; Wildfires; Wildfires - statistics & numerical data; Woodlands; Australia
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-21266-5

Australia’s 2019–2020 ‘Black Summer’ bushfires burnt more than 8 million hectares of vegetation across the south-east of the continent, an event unprecedented in the last 200 years. Here we report the impacts of these fires on vascular plant species and communities. Using a map of the fires generated from remotely sensed hotspot data we show that, across 11 Australian bioregions, 17 major native vegetation groups were severely burnt, and up to 67–83% of globally significant rainforests and eucalypt forests and woodlands. Based on geocoded species occurrence data we estimate that >50% of known populations or ranges of 816 native vascular plant species were burnt during the fires, including more than 100 species with geographic ranges more than 500 km across. Habitat and fire response data show that most affected species are resilient to fire. However, the massive biogeographic, demographic and taxonomic breadth of impacts of the 2019–2020 fires may leave some ecosystems, particularly relictual Gondwanan rainforests, susceptible to regeneration failure and landscape-scale decline.
Fires triggered by climate change threaten plant diversity in many biomes. Here the authors investigate how the catastrophic fires of 2019–2020 affected the vascular flora of SE Australia. They report that 816 species were highly impacted, including taxa of biogeographic and conservation interest.