David M J S Bowman
Biographic Data
| ID | 1762974 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David M J S Bowman |
| GIVEN NAMES | David M J S |
| FAMILY NAME | Bowman |
| SIGNATURE | BOWMAN D M J S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Tasmania |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8075-124X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 57 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 50 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1972 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Spatial heterogeneity in Holocene vegetation dynamics across Bass Strait and its regional paleoclimatic implications
We present a Late Pleistocene paleoecological record from King Island in western Bass Strait, Tasmania, and compare this to existing records from the eastern Bass Strait islands to improve our understanding of the region’s paleoecology and paleoclimatology. Vegetation change across the region followed similar trajectories during the late glacial–Middle Holocene, characterized by homogeneous warming and wetting trends. Spatial divergence occurred …
Landscape-scale experimental proof that tall wet Eucalyptus regrowth burns more severely than mature forest
We conducted a natural experiment using remote sensing and field monitoring data collected pre- and post-wildfire, contrasting mature and regrowth tall wet Eucalyptus forests, at a study site in southeastern Tasmania burned by a wildfire under moderate fire weather conditions. Satellite analyses showed that regrowth patches initiated by logging burned at significantly higher severity than mature forests. Regrowth forests had warmer and drier fire…
Progress and prospects for predicting wildfire spread through the wildland-urban interface
Wildfires that cross the wildland urban interface (WUI) are a major cause of property loss around the world. Recent disasters are likely exacerbated by climate change and continued expansion of urban areas. There is urgent need for better models WUI fires to improve prediction of major events, understand how fires propagate through the built environment, enabling evaluation of the vulnerability of individual buildings and the testing mitigation o…
Political orientation shapes attitudes to fuel management in the wildfire disaster prone island of Tasmania, Australia
Managing fuel loads is a critical step in reducing the risk of large, devastating wildfires. Fuel management activities can change the natural and amenity values of bushland proximate to where people live. Some treatments, such as prescribed burning, can affect air quality and hence human health. Accordingly, how fuels should be managed is intensely debated in the community and often becomes a political issue. Despite this, few studies have exami…
An expert system to quantify wildfire hazards in gardens and create effective defensible space
Wildfires are causing increased house loss worldwide, especially at the wildland-urban interface. Despite the existing plethora of guidelines to help creating defensible space in a garden and protect houses from wildfire, quantifying risk remains a research frontier. We designed an assessment method based on a recent global review of defensible space guidelines and identified hazards based on fuel type, amount, and spatial arrangement. We trialle…
Fire regime change in western Tasmania between 1830 and 2025
Journal records of explorers’ routes can illuminate colonial vegetation patterns and fire regimes at regional scales. Using geographic information systems and current vegetation and fire history mapping, we analyse the 1830 and 1833 expeditions to make contact with the Toogee nation of western Tasmania made by George Augustus Robinson with the assistance of Tasmanian Aboriginal guides. We found that Robinson’s routes were concentrated on treeless…
Social and health factors influence self-reported evacuation intentions in the wildfire-prone island of Tasmania, Australia
Personal decisions regarding evacuation to a safer place in response to the threat of wildfire have multiple social and cultural influences. However, little is understood about the role of an individual's health in shaping these decisions. Aim: To investigate associations between self-reported sociodemographic and health-related variables and wildfire evacuation intentions. We used data collected in the 2016 Tasmanian Population Health Survey and…
Climate, fire, and anthropogenic disturbance determine the current global distribution of tropical forest and savanna
Tropical forest and savanna biomes are pivotal in the functioning of the Earth system. Both are biodiverse and under increasing threat due to land clearing and anthropogenic climate change, and play important roles in the global carbon cycle, through maintenance of a large carbon pool in tropical forests, and exchange in savannas through extensive landscape fires. Reliable mapping of tropical forest and savanna is essential to understand how the …
Pathways for sustainable coexistence with wildfires
Smoke pollution must be part of the savanna fire management equation
Savanna fire management is a topic of global debate, with early dry season burning promoted as a large-scale emissions reduction opportunity. To date, discussions have centred on carbon abatement efficacy, biodiversity and cultural benefits and/or risks. Here we use a case study of Darwin, Australia to highlight smoke pollution as another critical consideration. Smoke pollution from savanna fires is a major public health issue, yet absent so far …
Environmental Hazards and Behavior Change
AirRater is a free smartphone app developed in 2015, supporting individuals to protect their health from environmental hazards. It does this by providing (i) location-specific and near real-time air quality, pollen and temperature information and (ii) personal symptom tracking functionality. This research sought to evaluate user perceptions of AirRater's usability and effectiveness. We collected demographic data and completed semi-structured inte…
Vegetation fires in the Anthropocene
Health Impacts of Ambient Biomass Smoke in Tasmania, Australia
The island state of Tasmania has marked seasonal variations of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) concentrations related to wood heating during winter, planned forest fires during autumn and spring, and bushfires during summer. Biomass smoke causes considerable health harms and associated costs. We estimated the historical health burden from PM 2.5 attributable to wood heater smoke (WHS) and landscape fire smoke (LFS) in Tasmania between 2010 and …
Unprecedented health costs of smoke-related PM2.5 from the 2019–20 Australian megafires
Human–environmental drivers and impacts of the globally extreme 2017 Chilean fires
Using smartphone technology to reduce health impacts from atmospheric environmental hazards
Background: Global environmental change is exacerbating human vulnerability to adverse atmospheric conditions including air pollution, aeroallergens such as pollen, and extreme weather events. Public information and advisories are a central component of responses to mitigate the human impacts of environmental hazards. Digital technologies are emerging as a means of providing personalised, timely and accessible warnings. Method: We describe AirRat…
Human exposure and sensitivity to globally extreme wildfire events
A transdisciplinary approach to understanding the health effects of wildfire and prescribed fire smoke regimes
Prescribed burning is used to reduce the occurrence, extent and severity of uncontrolled fires in many flammable landscapes. However, epidemiologic evidence of the human health impacts of landscape fire smoke emissions is shaping fire management practice through increasingly stringent environmental regulation and public health policy. An unresolved question, critical for sustainable fire management, concerns the comparative human health effects o…
Future changes in climatic water balance determine potential for transformational shifts in Australian fire regimes
Most studies of climate change effects on fire regimes assume a gradual reorganization of pyrogeographic patterns and have not considered the potential for transformational changes in the climate-vegetation-fire relationships underlying continental-scale fire regimes. Here, we model current fire activity levels in Australia as a function of mean annual actual evapotranspiration (E) and potential evapotranspiration (E ), as proxies for fuel produc…
Measurement of inter- and intra-annual variability of landscape fire activity at a continental scale
Climate dynamics at diurnal, seasonal and inter-annual scales shape global fire activity, although difficulties of assembling reliable fire and meteorological data with sufficient spatio-temporal resolution have frustrated quantification of this variability. Using Australia as a case study, we combine data from 4760 meteorological stations with 12 years of satellite-derived active fire detections to determine day and night time fire activity, fir…
Climate–vegetation–fire interactions and feedbacks
Fire is a complex process involving interactions and feedbacks between biological, socioeconomic, and physical drivers across multiple spatial and temporal scales. This complexity limits our ability to incorporate fire into Earth system models and project future fire activity under climate change. Conceptual, empirical, and process models have identified the mechanisms and processes driving fire regimes, and provide a useful basis to consider fut…
Climate-induced variations in global wildfire danger from 1979 to 2013
Climate strongly influences global wildfire activity, and recent wildfire surges may signal fire weather-induced pyrogeographic shifts. Here we use three daily global climate data sets and three fire danger indices to develop a simple annual metric of fire weather season length, and map spatio-temporal trends from 1979 to 2013. We show that fire weather seasons have lengthened across 29.6 million km 2 (25.3%) of the Earth’s vegetated surface, res…
Trajectory of change in land cover and carbon stocks following European settlement in Tasmania, Australia
What is the relevance of pyrogeography to the Anthropocene
A defining feature of both the Anthropocene concept and the new discipline of pyrogeography is combustion of carbon-rich fuels by humans. A key objective of pyrogeography is understanding to what degree landscape fires set by hominins has overwritten natural fires through geological time, and whether these changes had substantial ecological knock-on effects. This research is essential to precisely define the onset of the Anthropocene. Nonetheless…
Bushfires, Human Health Economics, and Pyrogeography
Bushfires (landscape fires) are a key Earth system process that affects humans and our societies and economies. In a recent article, we explored the coupling of humans to landscape fire through the lens of human health impacts of bushfire smoke. We noted that such an approach demands recognition of the indirect impacts and costs of bushfires that cannot be captured by simplistic proxies such as deaths directly attributable to a fire front. Evalua…
Bushfires in Tasmania
Displacement Dynamics in Southern Louisiana After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
Unprecedented health costs of smoke-related PM2.5 from the 2019–20 Australian megafires
Human–environmental drivers and impacts of the globally extreme 2017 Chilean fires
The Getting of the Nganabbarru
Nganabbarru, or water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis), is frequently hunted by Aboriginal men, and buffalo meat is an important food source for many Arnhem Land Aboriginal communities. The experience of buffalo hunting trips with Aboriginal men who reside at Korlohbidahdah outstation in central Arnhem Land is used as a point of departure to consider the relationships between Aboriginal people and megaherbivores in the past and the present, and to explo…
What is the relevance of pyrogeography to the Anthropocene
A defining feature of both the Anthropocene concept and the new discipline of pyrogeography is combustion of carbon-rich fuels by humans. A key objective of pyrogeography is understanding to what degree landscape fires set by hominins has overwritten natural fires through geological time, and whether these changes had substantial ecological knock-on effects. This research is essential to precisely define the onset of the Anthropocene. Nonetheless…
Bushfires, Human Health Economics, and Pyrogeography
Bushfires (landscape fires) are a key Earth system process that affects humans and our societies and economies. In a recent article, we explored the coupling of humans to landscape fire through the lens of human health impacts of bushfire smoke. We noted that such an approach demands recognition of the indirect impacts and costs of bushfires that cannot be captured by simplistic proxies such as deaths directly attributable to a fire front. Evalua…
Bushfire Smoke
Carbon-based microscopic particles have provided a crucial line of evidence in understanding the coupling between humans and fires. Through the sedimentary record, they have informed our understandings of the patterns of climate and humans on fire activity through time. The extent of contemporary atmospheric biomass burning emissions has become apparent through satellite monitoring, motivated by concerns about the effect on the climate system. So…
Convergence of Culture, Ecology, and Ethics
Can we untangle fire‐megafauna‐climate‐human Pleistocene impacts on the Australian biota
Climate–vegetation–fire interactions and feedbacks
Fire is a complex process involving interactions and feedbacks between biological, socioeconomic, and physical drivers across multiple spatial and temporal scales. This complexity limits our ability to incorporate fire into Earth system models and project future fire activity under climate change. Conceptual, empirical, and process models have identified the mechanisms and processes driving fire regimes, and provide a useful basis to consider fut…
Lessons from the 2006 Louisiana Health and Population Survey
The 2005 hurricane season caused extensive damage and induced a mass migration of approximately 1.1 million people from southern Louisiana in the United States. Current and accurate estimates of population size and demographics and an assessment of the critical needs for public services were required to guide recovery efforts. Since forecasts using pre-hurricane data may produce inaccurate estimates of the post-hurricane population, a household s…
Dynamics of Acacia aneura—Triodia boundaries using carbon (14C and δ 13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) signatures in soil organic matter in central Australia
Soil organic matter (SOM) was sampled from soil profiles on a near level sandsheet at the southern limit of the Tanami Desert in central Australia to determine if boundaries of Triodia hummock grassland— Acacia aneura shrublands had changed in the Holocene. Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) 14 C dating of 16 soil profiles showed that SOM that had accumulated at 100 to 140 cm depth, (near the base of most profiles) had ages between 1175 and 2630…
The Australian Summer Monsoon
Knowledge of the climatological processes that drive the Australian summer monsoon and the ecological consequences of this highly predictable seasonal cycle of wet summers and dry winters has greatly increased over the last several decades. Nonetheless, remarkably little is known about the antiquity of this climate system or how the geographic extent and duration of the monsoon have varied across temporal scales from the recent to the distant geo…
Two examples of the role of ecological biogeography in Australian prehistory
The author contends that ecological biogeography or analysis of contemporary ecological relationships can provide information on a speculative discourse associated with Palaeo-ecological and historic bio-geographic evidence. The contribution of ecological biogeography to two pre-historical problems, the impact of Aboriginal burning on vegetation and the spatial variation of stone tools is illustrated
Fire and cyclone damage to woody vegetation on the north coast of the Northern Territory, Australia
Tree stem (>2 m tall) mortality was assessed following a late dry-season wildfire across a seasonally flooded elevation gradient at Workshop Jungle, near Darwin, in the Northern Territory of Australia. For all species combined, dead stems had significantly smaller diameter at breast height (dbh) than living stems. Assessment of tree-stem damage following a tropical cyclone at Cobourg Peninsula, NT, revealed that damaged stems had significantly gr…
The Nostalgia of Kinetic Art
Bushfires in Tasmania
Can we untangle fire‐megafauna‐climate‐human Pleistocene impacts on the Australian biota
Fire and cyclone damage to woody vegetation on the north coast of the Northern Territory, Australia
Tree stem (>2 m tall) mortality was assessed following a late dry-season wildfire across a seasonally flooded elevation gradient at Workshop Jungle, near Darwin, in the Northern Territory of Australia. For all species combined, dead stems had significantly smaller diameter at breast height (dbh) than living stems. Assessment of tree-stem damage following a tropical cyclone at Cobourg Peninsula, NT, revealed that damaged stems had significantly gr…
Two examples of the role of ecological biogeography in Australian prehistory
The author contends that ecological biogeography or analysis of contemporary ecological relationships can provide information on a speculative discourse associated with Palaeo-ecological and historic bio-geographic evidence. The contribution of ecological biogeography to two pre-historical problems, the impact of Aboriginal burning on vegetation and the spatial variation of stone tools is illustrated
Tropical tree stand structures on a seasonally flooded elevation gradient in northern Australia
The variation in the stem size-class distributions of five dominant tropical tree species was studied in a grid established on a 7 m elevation gradient in a monsoon forest adjacent to a treeless floodplain on the north coast of the Northern Territory. Acacia auriculiformis was widespread over the gradient. The size-class distribution of stems was irregular and poorly related to elevation. These patterns are consistent with this species’ ability t…
Rainforests and Flame Forests
Fire ecology and Aboriginal land management in central Arnhem Land, northern Australia
Aim To compare fire behaviour and fire management practice at a site managed continuously by traditional Aboriginal owners with other sites in tropical northern Australia, including the nearby Kakadu National Park, and relate those observations to indicators of landscape condition. Location Dukaladjarranj, a clan estate in north‐central Arnhem Land, in the seasonal tropics of northern Australia. The site abuts a vast sandstone plateau that is an …
The Australian Summer Monsoon
Knowledge of the climatological processes that drive the Australian summer monsoon and the ecological consequences of this highly predictable seasonal cycle of wet summers and dry winters has greatly increased over the last several decades. Nonetheless, remarkably little is known about the antiquity of this climate system or how the geographic extent and duration of the monsoon have varied across temporal scales from the recent to the distant geo…
The Getting of the Nganabbarru
Nganabbarru, or water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis), is frequently hunted by Aboriginal men, and buffalo meat is an important food source for many Arnhem Land Aboriginal communities. The experience of buffalo hunting trips with Aboriginal men who reside at Korlohbidahdah outstation in central Arnhem Land is used as a point of departure to consider the relationships between Aboriginal people and megaherbivores in the past and the present, and to explo…
Healthy Country
Wildfire Smoke, Fire Management, and Human Health
Kangaroo metabolism does not cause the relationship between bone collagen δ 15 N and water availability
1 A negative relationship between water availability and the abundance of 15N relative to 14N (expressed as δ15N) in the bone collagen of herbivores has been widely reported. However, the relative importance of dietary δ15N and animal metabolism in producing this effect remains unclear. 2 To evaluate the relative importance of these two factors, we examined variation in δ15N of both grass foliage and kangaroo (Macropus spp.) bone collagen. We ass…
Ecohealth and Aboriginal Testimony of the Nexus Between Human Health and Place
Dynamics of Acacia aneura—Triodia boundaries using carbon (14C and δ 13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) signatures in soil organic matter in central Australia
Soil organic matter (SOM) was sampled from soil profiles on a near level sandsheet at the southern limit of the Tanami Desert in central Australia to determine if boundaries of Triodia hummock grassland— Acacia aneura shrublands had changed in the Holocene. Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) 14 C dating of 16 soil profiles showed that SOM that had accumulated at 100 to 140 cm depth, (near the base of most profiles) had ages between 1175 and 2630…
Australian Rainforests
Fire in the Earth System
Burn, Baby, Burn Wildfires can have dramatic and devastating effects on landscapes and human structures and are important agents in environmental transformation. Their impacts on nonanthropocentric aspects of the environment, such as ecosystems, biodiversity, carbon reserves, and climate, are often overlooked. Bowman et al. (p. 481 ) review what is known and what is needed to develop a holistic understanding of the role of fire in the Earth syste…
Pollen Loads and Allergic Rhinitis in Darwin, Australia
Convergence of Culture, Ecology, and Ethics
Displacement Dynamics in Southern Louisiana After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
The human dimension of fire regimes on Earth
Humans and their ancestors are unique in being a fire-making species, but 'natural' (i.e. independent of humans) fires have an ancient, geological history on Earth. Natural fires have influenced biological evolution and global biogeochemical cycles, making fire integral to the functioning of some biomes. Globally, debate rages about the impact on ecosystems of prehistoric human-set fires, with views ranging from catastrophic to negligible. Unders…
Estimated Global Mortality Attributable to Smoke from Landscape Fires
Background: Forest, grass, and peat fires release approximately 2 petagrams of carbon into the atmosphere each year, influencing weather, climate, and air quality. Objective: We estimated the annual global mortality attributable to landscape fire smoke (LFS). Methods: Daily and annual exposure to particulate matter ≤ 2.5 μm in aerodynamic diameter (PM2.5) from fire emissions was estimated globally for 1997 through 2006 by combining outputs from a…
Books
Lessons from the 2006 Louisiana Health and Population Survey
The 2005 hurricane season caused extensive damage and induced a mass migration of approximately 1.1 million people from southern Louisiana in the United States. Current and accurate estimates of population size and demographics and an assessment of the critical needs for public services were required to guide recovery efforts. Since forecasts using pre-hurricane data may produce inaccurate estimates of the post-hurricane population, a household s…
Bushfires, Human Health Economics, and Pyrogeography
Bushfires (landscape fires) are a key Earth system process that affects humans and our societies and economies. In a recent article, we explored the coupling of humans to landscape fire through the lens of human health impacts of bushfire smoke. We noted that such an approach demands recognition of the indirect impacts and costs of bushfires that cannot be captured by simplistic proxies such as deaths directly attributable to a fire front. Evalua…
Geography (34 works) · Fire effects on ecosystems (27 works) · Environmental Science (26 works) · Biology (23 works) · Ecology (23 works) · Ecology (16 works) · Ecosystem (16 works) · Climate change (14 works) · Meteorology (12 works) · Environmental resource management (11 works)