Spatial decoupling of fire hazard and vulnerability in dryland Australia: a compound risk index integrating 24 years of remote sensing and climate reanalysis data
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Operational wildfire management in Australia prioritises areas of high fire danger, implicitly assuming that fire is most consequential where it is most likely. We developed a Compound Fire Risk Index (CFRI) for the Brigalow Belt Bioregion, Queensland, informed by the IPCC AR6 risk framework, in which a hazard index is multiplied by a vulnerability component combining exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. The index integrates remote sensing, climate, census and infrastructure data at 1 km resolution, with weights assigned a priori through expert-based allocation. All time-varying predictors were built from 2001–2019 data, and the index was validated against withheld 2020–2024 burn scars. Hazard and vulnerability were spatially decoupled (r = −0.01). The decoupling persisted against observed fire history, after controlling for population density and for each vulnerability component, and the top-decile hazard and vulnerability areas overlapped less than expected by chance (5.9% versus 10%). In regional landscapes, vulnerability was concentrated where hazard was lowest (r = −0.50 to −0.25). The CFRI discriminated 2020–2024 burned areas modestly but robustly better than hazard alone (AUC = 0.554 versus 0.501; ΔAUC = +0.053, spatial block-bootstrap 95% CI 0.037–0.069). Under the wet La Niña conditions of the validation period, the vulnerability component alone discriminated burned areas best (AUC = 0.626), consistent with ignitions concentrated near people and infrastructure. The CFRI identified areas largely distinct from Queensland's Bushfire Prone Area mapping (ρ = 0.11), which maps where fire can propagate and discriminated burned areas more strongly (AUC = 0.714); the two products are complementary. Rankings were stable under ±10% and ±20% perturbation of the three top-level vulnerability weights (Spearman ρ ≥ 0.993); lower-level weights were not tested. Prioritising by hazard alone would shift 35% of the highest-priority area and largely miss the most vulnerable areas. The workflow is transferable to comparable dryland regions.
Source: Environmental Research Climate
Language: English
Topic: Fire effects on ecosystems
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,515
OpenAlex ID: W7225736193
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