Yesterday a blanket of smoke covered the entire city. Fire alarms were going off everywhere. I was in the city to meet friends and it was difficult to breathe. We wondered how could the fire alarms go off every where. We realised only later that the authorities were back burning. For me back burning was an alien term and a friend explained that you start a fire to stop a fire. This did not make sense to me. How could someone possible light a fire to hold the fire from spreading. This was as good as fanning the fire. I realised only after reading about it on the internet, how back burning is part of forest management technique which is traditionally followed in many countries.
Bush fires are one of the major contributors of green house gases through natural hazards in Australia. Back burning helps green house gases abatement since it is preventing major bush fires in dry season. Back burning is usually conducted during cool season. Professors Matthias Boer and Ross Bradstock from different Australian universities suggest that beside hazard reduction, prescribed burning is carried out to protect the biodiversity, forest regeneration and water resource management.
Burning biomass in bushes releases many harmful gases like carbon dioxide, nitride and other GHG to atmosphere. Emissions from vegetation fires account for about 3% of global GHG emissions. Fires in Australia account for 6-8% of global fire emissions and contribute significantly to the nation's net GHG emissions. Hence back burning is very crucial.
We humans have no control over how weather changes. So when weather conditions were severe in Victoria, in 2009, the treated and untreated fires were negligible or irrelevant because the bush fires created a denting havoc that summer. I was in Melbourne at the time and it felt like being in an open furnace. Point being, back burning can be a solution to a certain extent. We cannot rely on prescribed burning all the time. A new system or a methodology needs to be devise to tackle bush fire in dry seasons. Back burning may be a temporary solution but not a sustainable one.
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