Assessing Soil Properties Following a Cultural Burn in Southeast Australia

<p dir="ltr">Sustaining soil health is necessary for supporting the structure and functioning of aboveground ecosystems (Neary et al. 1999). When exposed to fire, the soil’s physical, chemical, and biological constituents considered essential for these processes are susceptible to a range of functional changes. In southeast Australia, Traditional Custodians have utilised fire as a land management tool for thousands of years, with the purpose of protecting and enhancing the health and biodiversity of the landscape (Firesticks Alliance Indigenous Corporation 2022). Although the impact of bushfires and prescribed burns on soil properties is understood, little is known about the effect of cultural burning. Through a range of field- and laboratory-based experiments on NSW’s south coast, this study has shown Indigenous-led fire practices improves soil health, when contrasted with a government organised “cool” burn. The cultural burn’s low severity caused minimal volatilisation to soil organic matter, allowing for additional inputs to existing nutrient pools, this resulted in >1.5 times more carbon and nitrogen. Through this incorporation, bulk density and moisture content were enhanced, which are trends directly linked to improved soil functionality (Al-Shammary et al. 2018). Additionally, soil pH remained within the regions naturally occurring range (5.1-5.5), while salinity was found to be >57% lower. Although no differences in biological activity were observed, the culturally burnt environment is expected to benefit from improvements to the soil’s physiochemical parameters. Furthermore, this research demonstrates the benefit of cultural burn practices applied to Country for belowground ecosystems, in a region left largely untouched from Traditional Land Management for decades.</p>