The increased prevalence of bushfires is causing double trouble, with a new study showing areas stripped of vegetation are eight times more likely to be impacted by flooding.
UNSW Sydney researchers found the chance of large-scale flooding in a specific catchment area can increase by as much as 700 percent if widespread deforestation has occurred.
Professor Ashish Sharma said a team of academics analysed decades of flooding data from regions in Australia which frequently suffered bushfires.
“The loss of forest canopy has long been claimed to increase the risk of flooding – but actually proving the direct link has proven difficult since the impact of other factors such as changing climate are hard to exclude,” Professor Sharma said.
He said his team had now confirmed the correlation and determined there was a very significant increase in the risk of flooding if forest canopies were removed from catchment areas.
“What we have shown is that the probability changes from a one-in-64 year flood event, to a one-in-eight year flood event if there has been deforestation.
“We can say there is an eight-fold increase in the likelihood of there being a flood.
“Deforestation and mega forest fires under climate change are happening all around the world, so this is a very important topic.”
Read the full study: Interception reduction from deforestation and forest fire increases large-scale fluvial flooding risk.
