June, 2005

The Tropical Savannas Cooperative Research Centre has secured $400,000 from the Australian Greenhouse Office to study the greenhouse gas impact of north Australia’s bushfires. The study will underpin innovative ways of reducing tropical Australia’s greenhouse emissions.

It might come as a surprise to many, but the greatest contribution to Northern Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions comes from bushfires – which are estimated to release the greenhouse equivalent of over 6 million tonnes of CO₂ each year in the Northern Territory alone.

These fires can be monsters: in a couple of hot and windy weeks in October last year a blaze in the NT burnt out almost 60,000 square kilometres, almost the size of Tasmania, making it one of Australia’s largest recorded bushfires.

The leader of the study, Dr. Jeremy Russell-Smith a consultant fire ecologist said we should now be able to limit these vast, late dry season wildfires, greatly reducing greenhouse emissions.

“There is a rapidly improving capacity to control fires in north Australia with Aboriginal communities and ranger groups, pastoralists and fire control officers,” he said.

“These groups are now cooperating and having access to better information and so we hope that these huge fires will soon be a thing of the past,” he said.

The study aims to pin down the impact that this improved fire management will have on the northern savannas’ greenhouse gas emissions. It will draw on the latest satellite images and analysis techniques to get more reliable estimates of how much greenhouse gas is emitted by bushfires.

It will draw on the expertise of the WA Department of Land Information, CSIRO and the Bushfires Council of the NT and work with the network of fire managers on the ground.