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Kathryn Fuller

Candidature

PhD Candidate

Thesis Title

The Biogeography of Fire: Mapping Key Fuel Types Across NSW

Research Project

Bushfires are a major natural hazard in most of Australia and their management is expected to become increasingly difficult under altered future climates and an expanding wildland-urban interface. High operating costs of management and huge financial toll following fires necessitate optimising management strategies for the most cost-effective risk reduction. Fuel management, i.e. reduction of the mass and spatial continuity of flammable plant biomass, is the core component of bushfire management in Australia. However, current methods of assessing fuels and quantifying fire hazard often lack information on the fine-scale variation in the occurrence of species of particular significance to bushfire behaviour, such as ribbonbark and stringybark eucalypts. These species are known to influence the likelihood and distance of spotting. Stringybarks also increase the likelihood of crown fires by increasing vertical fuel continuity. In my thesis I will examine the relationships between occurrences of these species and the environmental variables influencing their distributions in order to better predict fine-scale fuel variability in New South Wales forests and woodlands. Many fuel assessment methods also oversimplify fuel structure, an important element of fuel characterisation. Fuel structure is broadly defined as the physical structure of any flammable vegetation material. Fuel structure, fire weather, fuel moisture content and fuel load interact in complex ways, confounding efforts to explicitly describe the influence of fuel structure on bushfire behaviour. I will use remote sensing to develop new approaches of quantifying fuel structure so that these relationships can be identified and predicted on the landscape. Lastly, I will investigate the contribution of spatial variation in fuel composition and structure on spatial variation in fire severity in areas affected by the 2019/20 fires in eastern Australia. The overarching goal of my research is to improve upon current methods of predicting fuel properties across forested landscapes of New South Wales in order to inform fire management.

Bushfire Research

Our research also includes the role of fire and its effects on global change. Please see here (opens in a new window) for further details on our bushfire research.

Publications

Churchill AC, Zhang H, Fuller KJ, Amiji B, Anderson IC, Barton CVM, Carrillo Y, Catunda KLM, Chandregowda MH, Igwenagu C, Jacob V, Kim GW, Macdonald CA, Medlyn BE, Moore BD, Pendall E, Plett JM, Post AK, Powell JR, Tissue DT, Tjoelker MG, Power SA, (2022) 'Pastures and Climate Extremes: Impacts of Cool Season Warming and Drought on the Productivity of Key Pasture Species in a Field Experiment', Frontiers in Plant Science, vol.13, Article no.836968

Nolan RH, Gauthey A, Losso A, Medlyn BE, Smith R, Chhajed SS, Fuller K, Song M, Li X, Beaumont LJ, Boer MM, Wright IJ, Choat B, (2021) 'Hydraulic failure and tree size linked with canopy die-back in eucalypt forest during extreme drought', New Phytologist, vol.230, no.4, pp 1354-1365

Supervisors

A/Professor Matthias Boer, Dr Rachael Nolan, Dr Mike Aspinwall