The Australian bushfires of 2019-2020 were unprecedented in size and severity, however still very little is understood about how bushfires have affected (and continue to affect) aquatic environments and the people who rely on them.
OceanWatch Australia is currently collecting observations of impacts of bushfires to aquatic wildlife and habitats (e.g., wetlands, rivers, estuaries, coasts, open waters), as well as impacts to social/economic activities reliant on aquatic environments, through an online survey.
The more results we collect, the greater our understanding of these impacts will be, and the more information we will have to guide bushfire recovery intervention in the future.
Completion of the survey should take around 10 min, and we invite everyone to participate. A $50 Gift Card will be randomly drawn each month for those who assist us in our data collection.
This survey is part of a wider OceanWatch project called ‘Spatial Thinking: Mitigation of bushfire impacts on our marine environment’, the goal of which is to increase the resilience of aquatic, and particularly marine ecosystems to the impacts of future bushfire events.
Find the survey at: https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/00fd3c4316384897ba666c35a5e4c890
