We describe how fire research in northern Australia, although initially focused on fire behaviour and fire regimes and biodiversity, has diversified to address questions of the role of fire in other sectors of the north Australian economy, such as greenhouse gas emissions, carbon sequestration, the economics of fire management and Indigenous livelihoods. Most fire-management strategies in northern Australia involve the deployment of mixes of burnt and unburnt country across the landscape. Recent research has emphasised that fire frequency and fire severity both matter in the savannas, even though the biome as a whole is characterised by frequent fire and many components of the biodiversity of the savannas show a high degree of resilience to variation in fire regimes. Managing to reduce fire frequency - and hence to provide longer intervals between fires across the landscape - is, and will continue to be, a fundamental objective in landscape fire management. Defining, measuring and delivering heterogeneity in fire regimes has also been a feature of fire research in the past decade in north Australia, and will continue to be important in the coming decades. The management of fire management for optimal carbon benefits is a cross-tenure issue of increasing importance. Approximately 3% of Australia's accountable greenhouse gas emissions result from savanna fires. However, recent ecophysiological research has shown that the northern mesic savannas are a weak sink for carbon, and that sink strength is sensitive to fire regime. However, there is considerable temporal and spatial variation in the sink strength, and further research is needed to quantify such variation. There are considerable economic opportunities to be gained from appropriate fire management in northern Australia, and the technologies developed there have great relevance to the savanna landscapes in our near neighbours, such as eastern Indonesia. Optimal fire regimes for the coming decades will be those that deliver multiple benefits, and will require strong and effective community and governance partnerships to deliver such benefits efficiently and equitably.
