The study found poorer communities, renters and women carried the heaviest burdens long after the Black Summer fires were put out.
Articles on Black summer
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A researcher left 1,000 artificial bee nests in a forest devastated by bushfire … and then began an anxious wait.
Fire seasons on both sides of the Pacific overlap for seven weeks a year – and changes in Australia’s climate are driving the problem.
When authorities fight fires, they focus on human life and property. But animals are part of communities too – and disaster preparation should reflect this
As bushfire seasons grow longer and more intense, Australia needs new weapons in its firefighting arsenal.
Frequent fuel-reduction burning appears to prime ecosystems for major disruption when the next wildfire hits.
Howling winds take sea salt from the Southern Ocean and lay it down in Antarctica as snow, then ice. Hidden in these ice cores is a warning about Australian fire seasons.
There’s a strong case to be made for private landholders to conduct their own cool burns, for dual purposes of reducing fuel load and restoring the ecology.
Four years of persistent ozone holes have sparked concern about what more UV is doing to Antarctic ecosystems.
The 2023 megafires burnt more than 84 million hectares of desert and savannah in northern Australia. That’s larger than the whole of NSW, or more than three times size of the UK.
We compiled maps of bushfires and prescribed burns in southern Australia from 1980 to 2021 to see how fire activity is changing habitat for 129 threatened species such as mountain pygmy possums.
Marsupial rescue, rehabilitation and release statistics from New South Wales and Kangaroo Island during Black Summer fires reveal poor survival rates, despite the courageous efforts of volunteers.
Normally, many bushfires ease overnight, as temperatures fall and moisture in the air rises. But these are not normal times, as Queensland’s early-season fires are showing
We sampled 118 rivers and creeks before and after the Black Summer bushfires, searching for platypus DNA. Here’s what we found.
Many people are asking if Australian authorities are ready for the fire season. The real question to ask is – are we ready as individuals?
If you were pregnant or parenting during Australia’s 2019–20 summer of smoke and fire, chances are you felt acutely anxious – and grappling with impossible responsibility.
We used satellite data to create global maps of where and how fires are burning. Fire season lasts two weeks longer than it used to and fires are more intense. But there are regional differences.
Parents and emergency responders repeatedly said evacuation centres should have a separate space for families with very young children. Here’s what else we could do.
Before the colonists came, we managed the land with careful use of cool burns. To stop giant bushfires, we have to learn again how to care for country.
When the rainforests burned, the leaf litter did too – and with it, billions of invertebrates vital to healthy ecosystems.
Top contributors
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Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science, University of Tasmania
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Senior Research Fellow, UNSW
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Associate Professor, Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University
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Research Fellow in Environmental Science, University of Tasmania
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Professor in Biogeography, The University of Melbourne
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Emeritus professor, La Trobe University
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Associate Professor in Physical Geography, University of Nottingham
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Deputy Head of School, School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Newcastle
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Associate Professor in Quantitative Ecology, The University of Melbourne
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Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Newcastle
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Emeritus professor, University of Wollongong
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Professor of Bushfire Dynamics, School of Science, UNSW Canberra, UNSW
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Professor in Conservation Science, School of the Environment, The University of Queensland
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Associate Professor, School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Newcastle
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Senior Lecturer in Environmental Earth Science, Deakin University