Fire and Australian Forestry – key papers published since 1975

Fire has always been part of Australian landscapes, and its management has long been the focus of public debate and independent review, especially following major bushfires. Such attention has only increased since the 2019/20 Black Summer bushfires (Davey and Sarre 2020), including through two national and five subnational public inquiries. The many fire-related papers published in Australian Forestry over the years constitute a wealth of scientific knowledge that can contribute to debate and inform the current and future management of Australian landscapes, particularly forested landscapes. The first such article to appear – in the journal’s very first edition – was by Wallace (1936), who explored an understanding of fire weather in south-western Australia. Galbraith (1939) published a summary of a conference held in the wake of the 1939 bushfires in Victoria. Considerably later, McArthur (1966) described the role of prescribed burning in fire control and management. Cheney (1968) discussed the construction and use of McArthur’s fire danger tables, which were employed for much of the second half of the twentieth century to predict fire behaviour in Australia. Ryan and Turner (2009) and the Institute of Foresters of Australia (2009) published information and perspectives on matters related to the terms of reference of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission. The Institute updated its position in its submission to the recent national Royal Commission into Natural Disaster Arrangements, as published in Australian Forestry last year (Institute of Foresters of Australia and Australian Forest Growers 2020). With the aim of making the large body of research and perspectives on forest fire contained in Australian Forestry more accessible, we are publishing a ‘virtual’ (or online) edition, thereby bringing together a selection of 24 fire-related papers that have appeared in the journal since 1975. The articles have been chosen to provide background and context to the muchneeded debate taking place about fire in Australian landscapes. They provide important insights into the management and impacts of fire. Below, we briefly describe the featured papers using six themes: fire and the Australian environment; major bushfires; plantation fires; modelling fire behaviour; forest fuels; and fuel reduction burning. Readers of the hard-copy version of Australian Forestry can find the articles online by inserting the DOIs (given with the references) or titles into their search engines. The Appendix provided as part of this editorial comprises a complete list of 189 papers published in Australian Forestry since 1936 with direct relevance to fire management.