Michael Doherty, ‘How plants respond to fire: Examples from the ACT Region with a Particular Focus on Recovery After the 2003 Fires’

Michael Doherty is a plant ecologist with CSIRO Land & Water Flagship, based in Canberra. Born in southern Sydney, he spent much of his formative years botanising and bushwalking in the sandstone country of the Sydney Basin, and graduated with an Honours Degree in Science from the University of Sydney in 1986, majoring in plant ecology. For the past 30 years he has worked on a range of vegetation conservation and management projects at local, regional and national levels both in Australia and overseas. Both his work and outdoor interests have given him an extensive knowledge of the flora and vegetation of eastern Australia in particular, but his botanical interests extend globally and his overflowing bookshelves are a testament to his obsession. He has previously worked for the National Herbarium of NSW and the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and been with CSIRO since 1991. Michael is currently undertaking a part-time PhD at the Australian National University on the effects of fire on montane plant communities.

Although the media still describe vegetated areas affected by bushfire as being ‘destroyed’, this is far from the truth. Michael will discuss the many and varied ways that individual plants and plant populations cope with fire and how they recover after a fire event. He will use long term monitoring data collected pre and post 2003 in the Brindabellas to provide examples of how species composition and vegetation structure respond to different levels of fire intensity.