The impact of fires on plants in the summer of 2019-20

摘要

The 2019-20 fire season has seen devastating impacts on the natural world across Australia. The extent of the bushfires has been of a scale that is very difficult to make sense of. Images and footage of the immense suffering of animals have been confronting and heartbreaking. The estimate of the impact on animals has been as high as 1 billion animals killed by the fires. I keep getting asked what the impact on plants has been. Charred landscapes of immense size are of course predominantly images of burnt plants - trees and the understorey species that comprise those ecosystems. But can we state how many plants have been killed?