Step 2 · Report §2–3 · Expert elicitation & case studies
The nine scenarios aren't arbitrary —
they came from the managers.
A literature review identified candidate levers; workshops with DEECA fire managers winnowed and named them; two case studies tested whether the archetypes captured how managers actually think about their landscapes.
How the scenarios were built
Three inputs, one set of nine
Literature review
A review of ecological responses to fire management — what's been measured, what works, where the gaps are.
Expert workshops
Workshops with DEECA fire managers to identify management approaches for ecosystem resilience under future climates.
Five case-study regions
Grampians/Gariwerd, Mallee, Central Highlands, East Gippsland and the Otways — deliberately contrasting landscapes used to pressure-test the archetypes.
The five case-study regions
Five landscapes, deliberately different
Two fuel-limited regions, two climate-limited, and one mixed. If a candidate scenario behaves sensibly across all five, it earns its place in the simulation set.
Grampians / Gariwerd
Heath, mallee and dry forest on quartz-sandstone ranges in western Victoria. Fire-prone; management leverage is large.
Mallee
Semi-arid eucalypt and pine-broombush in the north-west. Sparse, slow-recovering vegetation; strongly fuel-limited.
Central Highlands
Wet montane ash forest north of Melbourne. Long fire-return intervals; weather dominates over fuel.
East Gippsland
Tall wet eucalypt forest into dry sclerophyll on the eastern uplands. Megafire-affected; climate-limited.
Otways
Cool temperate rainforest and dry sclerophyll on the south coast. Behaviour switches with the climate year.
The workshops decided which strategies the model would simulate. The model decided which of them held up under climate change. — EcoRes report, §2–3 (paraphrased)
What this earns the rest of the site
Every scenario named in step 3 traces back to either the literature review or a manager workshop. The names mean something. When the simulation shows that PRB beats JFMP on vegetation but loses on life and property — that finding can be defended back to the person who proposed PRB in a workshop, in a landscape they manage.