In 2018–19, the Victorian Bushfire Monitoring Program continued to deliver the monitoring program in the Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Framework for Bushfire Management on Public Land. This included monitoring fuel levels and ecosystem resilience. Program data allows us to determine how effectively planned burning reduces fuel and to evaluate our progress reducing bushfire risk.
The table below details the 1,217 sites at which we collected fuel data. The aim is to monitor 20% of all planned burns. Not all burn areas that are monitored pre-burn are ignited, as such the number of post-burn fuel hazard sites is generally lower.
Table: Fuel hazard sites monitored, 2018–19
| Barwon South West | Gippsland | Grampians | Hume | Loddon Mallee | Port Phillip |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pre-burn | 123 | 136 | 60 | 178 | 138 | 105 |
Post-burn | 86 | 113 | 59 | 89 | 100 | 30 |
The table below details the ecosystem resilience monitoring we undertook in each region. This monitoring is of the before-and-after impacts of planned burning on issues of local significance.
Table: Ecosystem resilience monitoring in regions, 2018–19
- One burn had habitat assessment monitoring to complement refugia research by The University of Melbourne.
- One burn had habitat structure and camera monitoring.
- Several projects were conducted including the Otway landscape refuges, Coastal wattle mapping and development of a biodiversity database.
- One burn had mitigation reviews of values including threatened flora, fire-sensitive EVCs, severity mapping checks of the Google Earth Engine mapping and burn objective outcomes for Spot-tailed quoll.
- Three burns had Greater Glider spotlight and habitat surveys pre- and post-burn.
- Two burns were monitored for Brush-tailed phascogales using cameras and hollow checks. We undertook pitfall trapping and a vegetation structure and diversity survey using cameras at 25 sites in Jilpanger to update species distribution and response curves.
- Two burns had Greater glider spotlight and habitat surveys. We also monitored TFIs and GSSs for all burns.
- Pitfall trapping and vegetation surveys were carried out at 27 sites in the Big Desert.
- Greater glider monitoring and hairpin banksia surveys were undertaken to improve knowledge of the responses of these species to bushfire and planned burning.
Page last updated: 23/12/20