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This task will enable students to explore their current understanding of issues relating to bushfires in Australia and plan for gathering and interpreting data to answer questions posed.

A teenager from Sweden has posted a message on a Facebook wall. The teenager has heard about bushfires in Australia and wants to know more.

The questions asked include:

• What are the main causes of bushfire?
• What is the average area burned by a bushfire?
• How much area is burned every year due to each cause of bushfire?
• How long does it take an area burned by bushfire to regenerate?
• How long until animals return to similar population numbers in an area burned by a bushfire?
• Are all Australian animals affected by bushfire?

Discuss the data required to answer the questions. Students work in pairs, record their initial ideas to the questions and plan how to gather evidence to support their final responses.

Resources

Causes of bushfires

This task will enable students to interpret data related to causes of bushfire and identify the main causes, providing data as a percentage.

Provide students with Handout 1 which provides data of bushfire causes in Victoria for a 20 year period. Students use the data to identify the main causes of bushfire (lightning, deliberately lit, and escapes from burning). The data enables students to look for trends across five-year periods.

Data can be provided for more recent years. Students could compare data sets.

Discuss with students the importance of converting numbers of fires to percentages to make comparison across years possible.

Students could research data for their own state if not in Victoria, or compare available data from other states to look for similar findings.

Students also compare area burned by bushfire for each cause type.

Resources

To burn or not to burn

This task will enable students to gather data on the use of 'prescribed burns' as a fire management strategy.

Students research fire management strategies in their state or territory using official government or authority websites.

Guide questions:

• What is the current approach to fire management in our state/territory?
• What are prescribed burns? How often do they occur? What area of the state is burned using this approach?

Students gather data to create a map with areas shown where prescribed burns have taken place. Tasmania (see resources) and Victoria (Department of Sustainability and Environment site search for "prescribed burns") have useful websites for this task.

Resources

Impact of fire on small mammals

This task will enable students to interpret data to analyse the impact of fire on several species of small mammals.

Provide students with Handout 2 that enables students to analyse survey data for a year prior to, and four years after, a major bushfire. Explain to students why numbers in the data set contain tenths and hundredths rather than only whole numbers which students may expect when describing numbers of animals. For example if 1 possum was trapped in one of the 77 sites in a particular fire severity zone the data would be 1 divided by 77 = 0.01.

Students could research the effects of fire on other animals such as invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, etc.

Advice for data analysis:

• The data suggests that small mammals do survive major fires. More specifically it shows: the Common Brushtail Possum was rare on sites that experienced high severity fire in 2003.
• Following the 2003 fire, a decline in the number of detections of Common Ringtail Possums was observed which occurred both on burnt sites and unburnt sites.
• Even though some individuals survived the 2003 wildfire, in the short term there is a trend for lower numbers of captures of Brown Antechinus on burnt sites compared with unburnt sites.

Resources