A year later, her work has shown that Tasmanian Aboriginal people inhabiting the Surrey Hills region of the state's West actively managed the landscape with burning techniques that prevented rainforest from taking over.

Ms Rogers was excited by the work and said it offered agency and validation to Tasmanian Aboriginal of the area, and other Aboriginal groups people around the country that used similar techniques.

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"I hope that this sort of work shows that what people are saying has a lot of factual merit behind it," she said.

"The point of the work was to show that the palawa people had an active role in construction of the landscape, rather than a passive influence."

For the study University of Melbourne science Honours student Ms Rogers, her supervisor Michael-Shawn Fletcher and a team of other researchers selected Tasmania's Surrey Hills, and Tasmania in general, because of the definitive history of eras in landscape management.

Ms Rogers said, in the area, British settlement had been established in 1803 and by 1835 there were reports of none or very from Aboriginal Tasmanians in the area. She said from 1835 to 1954 there was an "ad hoc" fire regime and then from 1954 onwards there was legislation preventing burning altogether.

"Tasmania provides really distinct time periods which has been a challenge in other parts of Australia ... that was a benefit of looking at the Surrey Hills," Ms Rogers said.

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"As a result you've basically got British arrival, indigenous elimination, then ad hoc fire management, then absolutely no fire management."

The study used aerial imagery, transecting specific areas and drilling into the ground to inspect the different layers of growth in turn showing how the area had changed over time.

The results of the study were then able to be compared against the notebooks of British surveyor Henry Hellyer who documented much of the area upon British invasion.

Ms Rogers said his descriptions of the area matched up with the study and was substantial evidence to say cultural burning was part of the Aboriginal land management regime.

"The landscape was described as open parks and commons and the sort of things they associated with a British landscape. That's the landscape they were familiar with, so that's how they described it," she said.

"But this similarity shows it's very likely there were grasslands, short grassy open plains and Savannah lands and sharp vegetation boundaries where there are rainforest species."

Since the cultural burning ceased, and again when the "ad hoc" fire management finished up, the study showed that the rainforest took over.

"The removing of cultural burning from the landscape has caused a major shift in disturbance regimes and has encouraged the landscape to return to its climatic potential which is rainforest dominance," Ms Rogers said.

In other words, the rainforest took over.

The research indicated that Aboriginal fire management meant that it was likely significant bushfires were avoided do to the "sharp boundaries" between the different types of landscape.

With the separation between grassy areas and wet rainforest, the intensity of the fires that burned was not high enough to rip through large areas and cross the boundaries.

Ms Rogers said this kind of management was highly effective in avoiding those fires.

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"[It can happen] because areas of the landscape are poorly maintained. Fire can build its velocity by going through grass, then shrubs, then small trees, then big trees - that likely wouldn't have been the kind of landscape actively managed by Indigenous people, there would have been really sharp vegetation boundaries."

Ms Rogers study was so significant that she received a stipend from the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering to help her.

AINSE also gave Ms Rogers the capacity to link up with Australia's Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. AINSE managing director Michelle Durant said projects like Ms Rogers' were selected prior because they showed a "high level scientific proposal".

The same scholarships are currently being advertised to UTAS students and Ms Durant encouraged students to apply.

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