Biodiversity impacts of the 2019-2020 Australian megafires.

With large wildfires becoming more frequent, we must rapidly learn how megafires impact biodiversity to prioritize mitigation and improve policy. A key challenge is to discover how interactions among fire-regime components, drought and land tenure shape wildfire impacts. The globally unprecedented 2019-2020 Australian megafires burnt more than 10 million hectares, prompting major investment in biodiversity monitoring.

The severity and extent of the Australia 2019-20 Eucalyptus forest fires are not the legacy of forest management.

The 2019-20 wildfires in eastern Australia presented a globally important opportunity to evaluate the respective roles of climatic drivers and natural and anthropogenic disturbances in causing high-severity fires. Here, we show the overwhelming dominance of fire weather in causing complete scorch or consumption of forest canopies in natural and plantation forests in three regions across the geographic range of these fires. Sampling 32% (2.