Files and links (2)
Fire regime has a greater impact than selective time harvesting on vegetation in sub-tropical Australian Eucalypt forest9.34 MB
Published VersionCC BY-NC V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
Fire Regime Has a Greater Impact Than Selective Timber Harvesting on Vegetation in a Sub-Tropical Australian Eucalypt Forest
Forests, Vol.12(11), pp.1-20
2021
Abstract
We compared selectively harvested and unharvested areas located among treatments of annual burning since 1952, triennial burning since 1973 and an area that had received no prescribed burning, but with a single wildfire in 2006 (one fire in 72 years), in a dry sclerophyll eucalypt forest, south-eastern Queensland, Australia. Historic fire regime, rather than low-intensity, selective timber harvesting (17% to 37% live tree basal area removed) had a greater impact on a range of vegetation and soil attributes. Plant taxa composition was influenced more by historic fire regime than recent harvesting; of the 25.5% of the variation in taxa composition explained, fire treatments alone accounted for 96.4% of the explained variation and harvesting alone accounted for just 4.8%. Selective harvesting of timber had a predictable influence associated with removal of tree cover and physical impacts associated with extraction of logs. In harvested areas there were increases (p < 0.05) in bare-ground cover and in coarse woody debris volumes and decreases in understorey vegetation height, particularly where woody understorey was present. However, overall, the combined effects of timber harvesting and fire regime were relatively minor. These sub-tropical dry eucalypt forests appear to be resilient to the impacts of combined, but low-intensity disturbances.
Details
- Title
- Fire Regime Has a Greater Impact Than Selective Timber Harvesting on Vegetation in a Sub-Tropical Australian Eucalypt Forest
- Authors
- Tom Lewis (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Forest Industries Research CentreTracey Menzies (Author) - Department of Primary IndustriesAnibal Nahuel Pachas (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Forest Industries Research Centre
- Publication details
- Forests, Vol.12(11), pp.1-20
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Date published
- 2021
- DOI
- 10.3390/f12111478
- ISSN
- 1999-4907
- Copyright note
- Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative CommonsAttribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
- Organisation Unit
- University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; Forest Industries Research Centre; Forest Research Institute
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99586008002621
- Output Type
- Journal article
Metrics
6 File views/ downloads
37 Record Views
InCites Highlights
These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output
- Web Of Science research areas
- Forestry
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
This output has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:
Source: InCites