According to a study published on September 1, the impact in terms of CO₂ emission of the huge fires of 2019-2020 was ultimately zero.
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These are results that clarify the dramatic balance of fires that have ravaged south-eastern Australia. Three years ago, between September 2019 and February 2020, fires of unprecedented magnitude killed at least 33 people and destroyed 2,500 homes. They also had heavy ecological consequences, destroying more than 8 million hectares of forests and emitting in the atmosphere more carbon that the country rejects it every year.
in the journal Remote Sensing of Environment, said, however, that, from the end of 2020, these programs had been reabsorbed by the vegetation, which pushed back very quickly. “Regarding biomass, everything that has disappeared during fires was recovered the year after, explains Jean-Pierre Wigneron, researcher at the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Food and the environment (INRAE) and one of the authors of the work. These fires were therefore neutral in terms of carbon emissions. “
If the forest surface loss is clearly visible, the loss of vegetation, measured in quantity of biomass, is much more difficult to estimate. The study assesses for the first time, in tons per hectare, the quantity of herbs, shrubs and eucalyptus having been lost due to fires, drought and particularly high temperatures, and the state of this Biomass one year after these extreme events.
“climate chance”
According to the estimates of researchers from INRAE, the police station for atomic energy and alternative energies and several international universities, which correspond to the results of other scientific works, around 15 % of the biomass of the forest area was lost during the 2019-2020 season, some 200 million tonnes of carbon rejected in the atmosphere. About half (90 million tonnes) is linked to fires, and the other half (110 million) at drought and record temperatures, the climatic conditions having had a major impact.
In 2020, on the other hand, the amount of biomass increased, which made it possible to store more than 260 million tonnes of carbon. A very rapid recovery which is explained by a conjunction of factors: the essences of Eucalyptus, the majority in the Australian forests, are known to “leave” extremely quickly after a fire. In parallel, the year 2020 experienced precipitation above average, which favored the resumption of trees still alive and the growth of the vegetation of the undergrowth.
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