Preparing New Zealand for extreme fire Five years of Scion extreme fire research came to an end in December 2021, changing the way knowledge is shared to stop fires starting, predicting extreme fire spread paths and developing tools for firefighters. It built on Scion’s 25-year fire research programme and deep knowledge of forest ecology and forest management. In 2016, Scion warned about the risk of extreme wildfires in New Zealand. Since then, we have witnessed large tracts of land blackened and homes destroyed in the Christchurch Port Hills (2017), Pigeon Valley (2019), Deep Stream (2019), Pukaki Downs (2019), Lake Ōhau (2020) and in the Far North (February 2022), as well as the cataclysmic fires in Australia and North America. It was not hard to predict the higher incidence of wildfires after so many years of record global temperatures. Five out of the last six years have beaten all previous records. Higher air temperatures and more droughts naturally result in more and
bigger blazes. Firefighters are struggling to manage them using conventional strategies. Scion’s general manager for Forests and Landscapes, Dr Tara Strand, says New Zealand urgently needed new methods and tools for managing extreme fire and this is what sparked the research. “The annual average direct impact of rural fire on New Zealand’s economy is over $67 million, with indirect costs estimated to be at least two to three times this, plus intangible indirect impacts as much as 30-60 times direct costs.” An article in the UK Guardian newspaper (23 February 2022) on increasing wildfires due to climate change, claimed that in relative terms, governments spend a good deal on emergency services and a tiny amount on prevention. However, in 2016, Scion received over $10 million from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE’s) Contestable Research Fund for a five-year
research programme to ‘identify, mitigate and adapt to’ the growing threat of extreme fires. Scion’s Preparing New Zealand for Extreme Fire programme investigated four main areas: a new fire spread theory crucial to predicting and reducing the extreme fire risk, innovative decision support tools for providing real-time information, creating new tools for preventing extreme fire, and developing targeted protection plans for communities and taonga species. It has delivered on its promises, as outlined in a very practical and detailed final report, released in August 2021 and available on the Scion website. A new understanding about spread First and foremost, experiments tested the emerging ‘convective fire spread hypothesis’ and development of models and data analysis that followed.
A rural fire scientist monitors a large-scale experimental burn of gorse at Rakaia Gorge in March 2020.
06 SCION CONNECTIONS MAGAZINE • ISSUE 41 • JUNE 2022
