Bushfires Australia: Black Summer | Part 3 — Bushfires impacting Air Quality and damaging the land
Part 3 of the blog reviews particularly devastating impacts to biodiversity and human life that occurred in eastern Australia, with around 12.6 million hectares containing primarily forest and woodland burning (Wintle et al. in press), although these area estimates are contested (Bowman et al. 2020) and where according to WWF, a huge number of native wildlife perished as a result of these fires. Over 2019–20, Australia experienced its worst fire season on record in eastern, south-eastern, and parts of south-western Australia. More than 15,000 fires occurred across all states, resulting in a combined impact area of up to 19 million hectares (Filkov et al. 2020).
This part reviews the impact of bushfires 2019–2020 on air quality, the land destroyed and wildlife. Data for this analysis is taken from data.NSW.gov(data_sources).
1. Black Summer_2019 damages
The data for this analysis is taken from AGRI_INVESTOR and Australian_Government (Agriculture Department).
Analysis-1: What were the extent of damages caused by the bush fires?
Interpretation: Figure B, 1(a) and 1(b) shows that Black summer had devastating impact and damage to environment, agricultural land, and forests. Some facts include:
A. Almost 18M ha of the total land has been damaged of which:
- The northern territory had the highest land loss incurred with an impacted area of 6.8 M ha.
- NSW lost almost 5.5 M ha of land with a loss of a higher proportion of conservation and forestry.
- Queensland had the highest agricultural loss of land i.e. 1,633,130 ha burned as compared to the other land types.
- Victoria had a significant proportion of forestry burned i.e. 874,327 ha.
B. Other collateral damages include: (Reference — Appendix Q2 Step1)
- Loss of almost 3000+ houses where NSW (2439) had the highest proportion of dwellings lost due to fires.
- The total number of human deaths was 34, with NSW reported the highest fatality number i.e. 25 people.
What are the impacts of bush fires on air quality?
The data for this analysis has been taken from NSW government data for the air quality index. Air quality data is captured on daily basis and then aggregated/consolidated into monthly and yearly (Appendix) data.
Interpretation:
From 2012 to 2019, the Air quality index on average remained consistent and stable except for slight changes i.e. increase or decrease as shown in Figure B, 2(a). However please notice and observe that there is:
- An increased air quality Index in December 2013 could be because of bushfires in NSW, damaging 100,000 hectares of land and several properties.
- The air quality index increased largely for the year 2019. From Sep-Dec 2019 it was staying on peak showing pollution with a highly contaminated air (µg/m3) index, which then gradually started to decrease around the end of Jan-2020. The increase in RAQI is also due to the particles (P10, P2.5) and the CO gases in the air because of bush fires (Figure B, 2(b)).
Read On:
Previous section: Part 2 — Research Question 1: Bush fires causing an increase in temperature?
Next section: Part 4 — Research Question 3: Bushfires devastating effects on NSW air and water quality
References:
- Wildlife:
2. Climate change:
Appendix:
Q2-Step1: Black Summer: Housed burnt and Fatalities
Q2-Step 3: Fire spots with samples of 100, 500, 1000, 2000
The damage black summer has caused is evident from the plots below, showing the fire spread. According to the AGRII investor, this fire has caused tremendous land damage to NSW, which is clearly observed in the different data fire sampling in the following figures. The abundance lies in southeast regions that comprise NSW.
