Carbon dioxide and particulate emissions from the 2013 Tasmanian firestorm: implications for Australian carbon accounting

Table 2 Estimates of consumed biomass per fuel size class and fire severity (dNBR) class for native (dry and wet Eucalyptus forests) and plantation (Pinus and Eucalyptus) forests, obtained from previous field measurements of native forests in Tasmania and mainland Australia

Vegetation class	Severity	Consumed fuel (0–1)		References and notes
Vegetation class	Severity	Fine	Coarse	References and notes
Native and plantation forests	Low	0.6	0.25	From Volkova and Weston [20] for prescribed burns; as well as from one paired burnt-unburnt field plot for this study area [37]
	Medium	0.8	0.46	From Hollis et al. [41] as average consumption across plots from regeneration burning in Warra, Southern Tasmania
	High	1	0.65	From O’Loughlin et al. [42] for severe fires under moderate drought. CWD estimate is the mean of 5–10 cm diameter branches (74% consumed) and 20 cm logs (56% consumed)
	Very high	1	0.9	CWD estimate based on consumption in high fire severity (CBI of 2.45) plots in Tasmania, and from a severe crown fire in Volkova et al. [43] and [38]
Non-forest	^aVery high	1	0.72^b	Recommended by Environment Australia [44] for wildfires in temperate grasslands

^aFire severity for non-forest class from aerial photography interpretation of the Forcett-Dunalley fire was very high as the fire burns all the aboveground biomass, although biological impact is obviously not comparable to woody vegetation
^bThe recommended value (0.72) is assumed to represent coarse fuels. CBI is Composite Burn Index, a field-based assessment of fire severity commonly used in coniferous-dominated vegetation in North America

ISSN: 1750-0680