Fire Ecology Data in Action

The NSW Sharing and Enabling Environmental Data (SEED) Map is an online platform hosted by NSW Government’s Natural Hazards Science Hub that curates natural hazards data across the state using an interactive map. Users can explore environmental data, hazard information, regional patterns, insights and other intelligence to broaden their understanding of natural hazards across the state.

A macro close up photo of the texture of the bark on an Australian stringybark eucalyptus gum tree. Image: Adobe Stock / Sarah

BNHRC PhD scholar and fire ecologist Kate Fuller, whose work has mapped key fuel types across NSW, was recently successful in having an academic dataset uploaded onto SEED.

What is this new data looking at?

Among Australia's eucalypts, species with stringy or ribboning bark are notorious for having bark that builds up in loose, flammable layers far more readily than the bark of most other trees, making them a particular concern when bushfires strike. To understand where these and other bark types are found and why, Kate’s team studied twelve distinct eucalypt bark types across the forests and woodlands of southeast Australia. 

“We looked at how each tree type's range relates to climate and to the local history of fire, then used environmental data to map where each type is likely to grow. These maps are designed to feed into fire behaviour models as fuels input data,” Kate said.

What does this mean for fire management in NSW?

Kate’s PhD research found that the different bark types are far from randomly scattered. Each tends to occupy its own kind of Country. Some are shaped mainly by climate; others by how often the landscape burns. For example, smooth-barked eucalypts tend to grow where fires are frequent, while species that mix smooth and rough bark, known as "smooth with stocking" or "halfbark", grow across a wide range of fire histories without being tied to any one.

Eucalypt forests and woodlands across NSW support a diversity of bark types that influence fire behaviour and ecosystem processes. Image: David Clode/Unsplash

“The most hazardous bark types, the ribboning and stringybark eucalypts, told a different story,” Kate said. “Rather than being governed by fire or climate directly, they were concentrated in the most productive sites, with more resources for faster growth. This hints that limits on productivity may constrain their distributions.”

Taken together, these findings add to a growing body of evidence that a eucalypt's bark is a useful clue to its broader survival strategy. The maps Kate produced, which are now available on SEED, show where each bark type occurs at 30-metre resolution, giving researchers and fire agencies a practical new tool for studying eucalypt ecology and predicting fire behaviour.

BNHRC Director A/Prof Rachael Nolan reiterated the importance of data like this being shared widely on a platform such as SEED.

“These maps of the distributions of eucalypt bark types will be useful for both researchers and fire practitioners alike. Anyone with an interest in eucalypt ecology and fire behaviour in NSW will find these maps of interest,” A/Prof Nolan said. 

“It’s a great achievement that a dataset produced from PhD research is being made publicly available on SEED. This is the first such dataset to be published on this platform that was produced by researchers from the NSW Bushfire and Natural Hazards Research Centre, and its predecessor, the NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub.”

“I hope this success can inspire other natural hazard researchers to explore similar data uploads to SEED.”