HSF How will savanna tree populations respond to fire management? Brett Murphy

The proposed research utilises a range of field studies to explore the effects of fire management on eucalypt and non-eucalypt tree populations in savannas, and the competitive interactions between these groups. We will collect field data to fill gaps in several existing long-term demographic datasets, to critically evaluate assumptions of existing process-based models of savanna tree populations. We will modify existing models to more realistically incorporate dynamics of the non-eucalypt tree component, which is likely to be strongly affected by changes in fire regimes due to fire management, and is responsible for much of the tree diversity in the savannas.