Investigating the Relationship between Fire Severity and Post-Fire Vegetation Regeneration and Subsequent Fire Vulnerability

The Australian 2019-2020 wildfires impacted the subtropical rainforest with a variety of burn severities, making them vulnerable to another burn. Rainforest post-fire regenerated vegetation could be highly flammable, containing fire-promoting species such as Lantana camara and fire-suppressing species such as Phytolacca octandra. This study investigated whether early post-fire regeneration may make rainforests more flammable and if this varies with fire severity. This study sampled three national parks where rainforest burnt in 2019-2020 across different fire severities to test if there were consistent patterns in post-fire regeneration flammability. We found that flammable species increased in the regions where fire severity was higher.