Fire is pivotal to the functioning of Australian ecosystems. The Fenner School has a number of projects that examine bushfires – how it behaves, its effects on the landscape and ecosystems, and how we can monitor and manage it in natural and built environments. This includes using technology such as airplanes and satellites to monitor and map fire conditions in forests, and using simulations and computer modeling to predict how fire will behave in a landscape or how climate change will affect the risk factors for fire.

Projects and areas of research include:

• Satellite remote sensing of forest fuel load, structure and moisture content (OzFuel, with InSpace)
• Mapping forest fuel load and structure from airborne LiDAR data
• Research on early warning system for bushfires