Here is what the page “Colonisation created a 'catastrophic wildfire loop' in south-east Australia, study finds” contains. A new study published in the journal Fire Ecology has found that the drastic land use changes following British colonisation in 1788 created a 'catastrophic wildfire loop' that made south-east Australia more vulnerable to climate-fuelled bushfires. Researchers, working with the Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation, reconstructed 1,000 years of vegetation and fire history at Purghagoolah, a lake in Croajingolong national park in Gippsland, Victoria. They found that before colonisation, the landscape was an open woodland maintained by Aboriginal cultural burning practices, which resulted in low-intensity fires.
After colonisation, the suppression of these practices led to a shift to dense forest with higher fuel loads, causing more intense and severe fires. The study highlights the importance of reintroducing cultural burning to reduce future bushfire risk, as climate change exacerbates fire danger. For the complete material, the listing points back to the source inside the network.