Dense canopy conditions in young postfire lodgepole pine forests heighten crown fire potential under less than extreme wind and fuel moisture conditions. Expansion of young forests over the next century due to increased fire activity may pose an increased risk to firefighting personnel, human infrastructure and ecosystem services.

Bark from messmate stringybark has a reputation for producing firebrands and acting as a ladder fuel. The ignitability of bark fragments primarily depended on the degree of char from previous fires; the sustainability of combustion depended more on bark fragment physical dimensions. Field-assessed hazard scores and time since fire were both indicative of ignitability but not sustainability.

Measurements of rate of spread of fires burning eucalypt litter fuel in a combustion wind tunnel by ocular observation, visible spectrum video imagery and thermocouple instrumentation of fires are compared. Overall, the three methods gave similar results, but some of the mean values were significantly different depending on the dryness of the fuel and speed of the wind.

We performed an experiment to determine the relative effects of terrain slope, vegetation density and ground surface roughness on travel rates in order to develop a method for mapping optimal wildland firefighter escape routes using airborne LiDAR remote sensing data.

We measured the effect of rare wildfires in mulga-dominated communities of eastern Australia to test dominant paradigms of woody vegetation dynamics. Our results suggest that the role of fire in shaping the structure of these communities has been overstated. This interpretation is consistent with emerging regional studies in low-productivity semiarid environments.