I am more informed after one of your videos . Thankyou so much.

Thank you Mr Ridd, very well presented. > I was just having a mental review of some parts of this last week. my thoughts were: +What effect does the lack of cold burning have on the propagation of species that require a cold fire events for seed germination? (Fire traditional occurred in Australia due to native societal burning practices and natural "Dry" lightning events.) Today we have reduced the practice of cold burns and dry lightning events are often quickly extinguished (by man) rather than running their natural course. Keeping in mind that cold burn vs no cold burn vs uncontrolled hot burns all have a different mix of positive and negative impacts on both individual species of flora and fauna. + If this change in burning does have a genuine impact what is (and how would we measure) the change in balance of species (both flora and fauna)? You gave a hint with the expedition records, but it may be insufficient in data for any genuine comparison. + If there is an impact on the balance of species between the last 200 yrs to present years of burning practice compared to the previous 60k yrs plus, how does this effect the overall ecology in comparison? (I guess there is an underlying generalized question of "Is this change in practice a net positive or net negative.") > To cold burn or to not cold burn. Keeping the above in mind, the answers to these questions have larger societal impacts as well as impacts on the environment when we consider our tendency for wanting to build communities in and amongst forested regions. Allowing for an excessive build up of undergrowth and dead wood leads to "Hot Fires" in a natural event, whereas purposeful controlled cold burning leads to a more likely "Cold Burn" in a natural event. (Note in a modern context I have also include accidental fires such as glass, power transmission, arsonists etc. along side of lightning. Each results in an unmanaged or uncontrolled burn event). > Although my thoughts are slightly removed from the focus point of the topic I did find the contents extremely interesting :) > RE: Images. I quite likely have access to some landscape images (photo) back to about 1945 (not public) around FNQLD. I will be digitalizing many in the near future so I will keep this in mind.

It must be frustrating for many when the hard evidence repeatedly fails to support the religious zealotry of AGW.

@Want0nS0up

3 ай бұрын

Brilliant comment. It succinctly sum up the frustration of dealing with these zealots.

I seen a comment about first settles being able ride horse at "gallop" in the forest. You could not do that today's unkempt forests. That is the reason for unstoppable fires

@lynndonharnell422

7 ай бұрын

That sounds suspiciously like the comment attributed to an early resident of New England, USA.

Forestry practice and management should be considered with the legal rule of 2 trees planted for every 1 chopped down, i am no one so getting information from the relevant departments is too hard pile, however i can evidence 1 local patch planted in the 50's neat rows, of course with the move to steel better transport etc it was never harvested and is now a conservation park, which obviously looks funny and clearly not natural via the rows. A second aspect to consider is reclamation projects, i would like to see a full list of plantings, In SA everyone has been hard at it all my life, Local councils, schools every little town has a progress association and all do regular volunteer efforts and tree planting days annually. The list of organisations alone is hard to fathom, Trees for Life has been around since 1981, Bush for life, then there is Land Care Australia, The 20 million trees project, National Tree Program, the One Billion Trees Project, Bushcare Support, National Corrdiors of Green, Florabank and Green Corps. That's just that i am aware of off the top of my head, and not including private land owners i have known who have been quietly planting away at our own expense for over 30 years. I don't have the figures naturally but deduction would have me guessing at least 1 tree has been planted in SA for every Australian person annually for over 25 years, that's 625 Million trees, Minimum. in one state. TFL boasts over 500 Mill alone over their 42 years, and their data helps, they cite a 70% success rate for establishment and further 10% loss to fire/drought/frost etc over a 30 year period meaning 60% of what they planted 30 years ago is still alive and growing. I am easily lost and clearly wrong with data collection, but feel i am extremely underestimating the sheer volume of trees planted by all the organisations put together Australia wide, The ANU suggests i am not far off with 8 trees per person grown every year Australia wide, a whopping total of 200,000,000 per year for 30 years = 6000,000,000 or 6 Billion trees. Then using TFL survival data there is 3.6 Billion more trees than there was in 1993. Again i reiterate, that's a bare minimum extreme underestimation. I cannot believe all our efforts still seem to go unnoticed with "environmentalists".

@marktanska6331

7 ай бұрын

You should have a look at forestry practices in Scandinavia. It is treated as generational crop. Trees are harvested, then replanted by people who will not harvest, but the next generation does, and so on ...

Same in America. Most of the Midwest from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico was grassy prairie and today the areas have abundant trees. Now many in America will cry “False!” because of the large crop fields and pastures. But the fact is that trees are abundant around the agriculture areas and towns and within creek and river areas - far more than existed prior to European settlement. Prior to the 18th century, aboriginal-ignited and lightening-initiated wildfires kept Middle-American mostly treeless for centuries. I have a graduate degree in tallgrass prairie restoration so…

On ya mate

Photos from the mid 1800's in the Adelaide Hills and Barossa Valley (especially Williamstown and Humbug Scrub) show that there were way more expanses of grasslands than now, where thick impenetrable forest clog the hill country in modern times since the aboriginal community was killed off or dispersed. The artist sketches also show the same when studied closely. 1830 to 1930.

@reefrebels

4 ай бұрын

Thanks for pointing that out , many great examples

What you say about forests, is much the same for the dandenongs in Victoria. Photos and names of roads show that a lot of the hills were devoid of trees.

@reefrebels

4 ай бұрын

thanks for pointing it out

@kezzatries

4 ай бұрын

@@reefrebels some time over the last couple of years there was an article and pics in the Diggers garden mag re the situation. I'm sure if you contracted them they would be able to pull up the article for you, I don't have it unfortunately.

I'm interested in what damage and, what species have been eradicated by the continual Burning of the landscape over the last 10 or 20 thousand years. If you keep applying fire to an area, surly the only species that will be left are those that can sustain those situations.?

@reefrebels

4 ай бұрын

in fact about 70 per cent of plant species in Australia’s eucalypt forests will survive bushfires through defence mechanisms developed over millions of years.

@rogerthat487

4 ай бұрын

@@reefrebelsThe ones that could survive survived. The question is how many couldn't . Does it matter? Natural selection in action? Human destruction of habitat?

and of course the reported further greening of the planet indicated by the NASA satellite which includes the increases of grassland in places like the Sahara though a cursory investigation I did not find any papers specifically talking about this for Australia only papers talking about things like C3/C4 composition changing over time.

@jaymannewell

7 ай бұрын

earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/92100/a-pulse-of-green-in-australia

4:07

@reefrebels

6 ай бұрын

what about?

@conlon4332

6 ай бұрын

@@reefrebels It's where I stopped watching, so when I keep watching I know where I left off.

Does this mean Koalas are not endangered or that the koalas are endangered in spite of gains in forest.

@sevenidols607

7 ай бұрын

I like you. But you should answer my question. Are Koalas really threatened?

@reefrebels

6 ай бұрын

I think over all Koalas are not endangered, however in local areas, such as a few areas around Brisbane where forest is being cleared for new suburbs, there may be some loss. But overall in Australia they seem to be very common and there is huge areas of habitat for them in state forests. But if we don’t manage fires properly - that is bad for Koalas. Hot fires kill everything. Small regular fires are much less destructive.

@sevenidols607

6 ай бұрын

@@reefrebels awesome thanks. I'm hoping for the great koala national park

@joshs470

6 ай бұрын

Koalas would most likely be less prone to intense fires in open grassy woodland.

are your eyes doing ok Dr. Ridd? they look full of cataracts

you can tell there was a point where this man realized his wife no longer loved him, and he just accepted that and now lives trapped in a cold, loveless marriage. you can tell this because of the way he looks

@reefrebels

4 ай бұрын

in contrary , its quite the opposite

One of the most laughable videos on youtube. Let me get this straight. You set out to put forward an argument that 'there are more trees and scrub in Australia today then there were a few decades ago'. Surely to do this you need to actually compare levels of clearing and levels of regrowth. You mentioned clearing once and then spent the rest of the video providing anecdotal examples of places where regrowth and densification has occurred. How do those anecdotal examples give you any indication of whether levels of regrowth have offset the vast levels of clearing? And you call yourself a scientist. Also, if you're going to draw conclusions about Australia's forests surely your analysis needs to be at a continent scale (or at least landscape scale). Instead you just cherry picked examples that fit with your narrative. "the politically correct story nowadays is that Australia is still losing forests to clearing and timber." - Love that you try to make this politically charged. When I drive down the road and see logging trucks driving out of a state forest with old growth trees loaded up on the back that's a pretty indication that our forests are still being cleared for timber. Or do you think the logs on the back of the truck werent actually trees that were cut down? There's nothing 'politically correct' about it. "I'm quite interested in other historic pictures that show an increase or no change in forest cover." - This says everything. You're not trying to conduct an analysis of the state of Australia's forests. Instead you've come up with your own narrative and want to find more anecdotes you can use to get clicks and views on youtube videos.