Bushfire website engulfs the west

With bushfire season approaching, an award-winning service that provides information on fire activity in Northern Australia has expanded into a nationally significant resource.

The North Australian Fire Information web service, hosted and coordinated by the Darwin Centre for Bushfire Research (DCBR) at Charles Darwin University, will now provide satellite-sourced mapping information for areas of Western Australia.

DCBR service coordinator Dr Peter Jacklyn said the service would assist rangers and fire managers in the newly mapped areas, including the Pilbara and the Gibson and Great Sandy Deserts.

“Fire respects no borders,” Dr Jacklyn said.

“We’re all linked by these fires that can sweep across the landscape but, until now, fire managers in WA didn’t have access to these kinds of maps.”

Dr Jacklyn said the regularly updated maps displayed data on fire events in the form of fire hotspots and fire scars for more than 90 per cent of the country’s rangelands.

He said the service was the most widely used source of fire information for North and Central Australian rural and remote fire land managers, and had helped guide recent changes to fire regimes in Arnhem Land.

Last year, the service won Best Collaboration at the Territory Natural Resource Management Awards.

Included in the team was DCBR research fellow Rohan Fisher, who oversees the service's information about the NT and Kimberly regions, and senior data officer Felicity Watt, who is responsible for the WA rangelands mapping.

The WA expansion is funded by the WA Rangelands Territory Natural Resource Management group.

The web service can be viewed at W: firenorth.org.au/nafi3/