Firestorms in savanna and forest ecosytems

Curse or Cure?
by Catherine Browne, MSc student, and William Bond, Ecologist, Botany Department, University of Cape Town

n the morning of 13 September 2008, the undulating landscape of Hluhluwe Game Reserve was a rolling patchwork of green, dense forests and the pale yellows and browns of winter grasses. But over the next 48 hours the hills of Hluhluwe were transformed, and areas dominated by thickets and forests were diminished essentially overnight, opening the landscape for sun-loving grasses to invade. The land singed and black, all bush removed, smouldering. Over a few days, the ashy black was replaced with the stark green of new growth. From forest to grassland: a shocking natural transition brought about by just one event a fierce firestorm. Despite the terrible aura of destruction, fire is a necessary and vital driver within savanna ecosystems. Grasses and forests have long coexisted and natural fires have been sweeping through the African landscape for millions of years, fine-tuning the mosaic of these fundamentally incompatible communities. Grasslands depend upon these fires for regeneration, while they are very destructive to forests. But forests usually survive grass fires with only their margins singed. However, the way in which fire patterns the landscape needs be better understood, because everything is changing Globally, and in South Africa, the effects of climate change on our ecosystems are quite noticeable. A risky trio of changing rainfall patterns, rising air temperatures and low humidity has resulted in extreme fire
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weather with widespread increases in forest flammability and subsequent large-scale fire events. Over the past decade extreme fire weather patterns have generally increased in frequency, size and intensity to levels beyond those historically experienced. If this is the case now, what then might the future hold? In the face of climate unpredictability, how do we foresee, prepare for, utilize, and manage these events during the fire season? A grassland perspective While it is tempting to focus on the shock of destruction caused by extreme fire events, they can also be recognized as positive agents that can be used to tackle the worrying colonization of grassland systems by advancing indigenous woody vegetation, called bush encroachment. And bush encroachment is on the rise. In the face of the new climate regime, woody plant cover is promoted as never before in the history of savanna landscapes. Why? Because present carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere are higher now than they have been for at least one million years and CO2 acts like a steroid for the growth of woody plants. What results is a shift in the grass-tree balance with woody plants gaining increasingly over savanna grasses, which have evolved under lower CO2 conditions. Left unchecked, what we may witness is the loss of our grassland and savanna biomes to advancing scrub forest. Firestorms could be the best way to reverse this.

ABOVE: The 2008 firestorm in Hluhluwe. Photo: Dirk Swart. A forest perspective Forest ecologists, however, have thrown another spanner into the works. Many have raised concerns about the threat that grassfuelled fires might pose to forests and the biodiversity they support. Forest-grassland mosaics exist because, though grasslands can burn very frequently, fires do not usually penetrate forests. Typically these fires require a continuous supply of grass fuel for the fires to spread and forests shade out the grasses. But if the rules change, and grassland fires begin to enter and burn forests more frequently, then forests may be eliminated. For the last half century and more in Hluhluwe Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, forests have had the upper hand. Major bush encroachment has engulfed the grasslands, despite frequent fires and the activities of elephants and many other browsers (such as Impala, Nyala, Black Rhino, Kudu, Bushbuck and Giraffe). However decades of scrub forest invasion of grasslands was reversed in a single day. In September 2008 a very severe fire burnt right through the newly formed thickets and a forest section in the park, completely destroying the forest structure. This was a novel situation that challenged what we know. Typically fires do not penetrate beyond the edges of the forest and thicket stands. What was the cause of this firestorm? And, the burning question is how did it happen?

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One possible answer was that the reserve had been heavily infested with Chromolaena odorata, an invasive pest in the park that belongs to the sunflower family and hails from North and Central Amerca. The plant is more flammable than the scrub forest species it replaces while piles of dried, felled Chromoleana would provide a ready fuel-bed. However alien clearing teams at Hluhluwe have dome a remarkable job in getting rid of Chromolaena and we could find no evidence to show that either old cleared areas, or areas yet to be cleared, burnt any more fiercely than uninvaded areas. So if not the fuel, then how about the weather preceding the fire? The big fires in California, Greece and Australia in the last few years were preceded by long, hot droughts ideal conditions for high intensity wildfires that burn down forests. Yet the 2008 Hluhluwe firestorm was preceded by an average rainfall season, not particularly hot, nor dry. Indeed the fire danger index used by plantation foresters showed nothing unusual in the days preceding the fire. Switched on for fire In growing frustration, we turned to an idea first suggested by Australian colleagues. Imagine a set of switches. To get a ship or a plane moving, all those switches need to be on. Well, fire, they suggest, is the same all switches need to be on and then there is nothing stopping the firestorm. If any switch is off, it will be an ordinary fire (or no fire at all). So what are the switches for a severe fire event? The Working on Fire teams have come up with a memorable rule thirty, thirty, thirty conditions. This means air temperature greater than 30 C, relative humidity less than 30% and wind speed greater than 30 km/ hour. Fires during these conditions cannot be contained. Any sensible person would go swimming. You can imagine the other key switches: there must be enough grass to fuel the fire, the grasses should be dry, and you need a match. Well, there was plenty of grass, it was bone dry at the end of winter, and an arsonist provided the match. And our detailed weather station data showed that 303 conditions continued for hour after hour on the day of the firestorm. All switches were on! The unnerving thing is that, unlike the big fires of Australia, Greece and the USA, the extreme weather conditions appeared overnight and without any prolonged build-up. Analysis of the climate data from our weather station at Hluhluwe from 2001-2008 showed that the alignment of all three switches to produce 303 weather conditions is very rare. It is even rarer if the fuel switches are included. And then you need the final switch of the fool with the match. Or is it that foolish? Thicket and forest patches that developed and expanded over decades were changed in composition and structure over 48 hours. Was this event desirable or undesirable? The fire was desirable from the point of view of reducing bush encroachment, but undesirable due to the loss of forest and the biodiversity it supported. This fire created the potential for a system switch, allowing the return of savanna through the spread of savanna grasses into the now open, sunlit landscape.

Should we throw the final switch sometimes? Preliminary data from this study in Hluhluwe suggests that burning the veld under weather conditions conducive to severe fires, the 303 phenomenon, provides an opportunity for managers to reclaim invaded grasslands by opening up densely wooded areas. There are, of course, major safety issues, such as good fire training, equipment and manpower that need to be taken into account before firestorms can be effectively and safely emulated. Through understanding the causes of such an extreme fire event as that of Hluhluwe in 2008, managers in the future could either ignite fires under extreme conditions to help savannas recover from bush encroachment, or be under high alert when extreme conditions arise. As far as we know this is the first South African study characterizing the climatic and other conditions causing grass-fuelled firestorms capable of burning into forested areas. The onset of 303 conditions, when a mild fire is already burning, may be very important to understanding the dynamics of these severe fire events. The ability to predict firestorms, and their consequences in the future could be improved by furthering our understanding of the dynamics of flammable connectivity and the relationships between fire switches. We wonder whether similar extreme weather events might account for the very damaging fires that have occurred in South Africa in the last few years where losses of lives (of both people and livestock) and destruction of infrastructure and property have been devastating. Our interest is ablaze and several burning questions remain unsolved. We are particularly interested to see whether the 303 rule has any wider relevance as a marker of extreme fires. As an early warning signal, it seems essential to identify synoptic conditions that best predict the onset of firestorm weather. No doubt different land-users will have different attitudes to firestorms. In the Hluhluwe context, we argue that they provide an excellent opportunity to turn back the tide of scrub forest invasion of the grassy biomes. But if firestorms become the norm in our globally warmed future, they would be disastrous for our indigenous forests. Regardless of their ecological effects, these are extremely dangerous phenomena and we salute the Working on Fire teams for identifying the weather conditions and for their skill in managing the fires.

GET CONNECTED We are in the early stages of understanding fire storms. We dont know all the answers or even the questions but are open to communication and would be most grateful for any information. The author can be contacted at catmbrowne@gmail.com.
BELOW LEFT: Prof. William Bond at a pre-fire grassland-thicket boundary. Photo: Catherine Browne. BELOW: A post-fire thicket patch. Photo: Catherine Browne.

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