Saskia Grootemaat
Saskia is a Bushfire CRC Associate Student, and is completing her PhD at the plant functional ecology group at Macquarie University. Her PhD is titled 'Burn to be wild – linking fire and plant ecology'.
Saskia's PhD focused on the influence of plant traits on the turnover processes of fire and decomposition. A better understanding of the role plant traits (like leaf size or chemical composition) play in these processes could lead to more precise predictions of fire behaviour. Additionally, predictions may be able to be made for future fire regimes, based on vegetation shifts due to climate change.
Saskia collected data on leaf flammability for 32 plant species found in NSW, and compared this with decomposition data that is already available. Additionally, she investigated both the bark-decomposability and flammability of 11 abundant NSW tree species.
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