Blundells Flat, Ex-coupe 427A, ACT. VAST-2: Tracking the Transformation of Australia's Vegetated Landscapes
<br>The aim of this project is to compile land use and management practices and their observed and measured impacts and effects on vegetation condition. The results provide land managers and researchers with a tool for reporting and monitoring spatial and temporal transformations of Australia’s native vegetated landscapes due to changes in land use and management practices. Following are the details about Blundells Flat, ex-coupe 427A, ACT.
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Pre-European benchmark-analogue vegetation: the site vegetation was originally brown barrel (<em>Eucalyptus fastigata</em>), growing in association with ribbon gum (<em>E. viminalis</em>).
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Brief chronology of changes in land use and management:<ul style="list-style-type: disc;">
<li>1788: Unmodified and intact tall open eucalypt forest; forest unaffected</li>
<li>1860: Area burnt by severe wildfire</li>
<li>1915: Water catchment area declared for Canberra –forest unaffected</li>
<li>1939: Area burnt by severe wildfire</li>
<li>1915-1954: Area managed as water catchment area – frequent forest fires to control fuel loads</li>
<li>1955: Commenced selective logging of mainly brown barrel (<em>E. fastigata</em>)</li>
<li>1956: Clear-felled remaining wet sclerophyll forest and pushed timber into windrows with a bulldozer</li>
<li>1958: Felled timber burnt in February</li>
<li>1958: 1<sup>st</sup> rotation radiata (Monterey) pine (<em>P. radiata</em>) planted by hand</li>
<li>1960: Controlled competing regrowth native vegetation, manually with axes, slashers, or hoes</li>
<li>1986: 1<sup>st</sup> rotation trees logged and crawler tractor used to snig timber off site</li>
<li>1987: Slash left on the ground to decompose - no ripping - too steep</li>
<li>1988: Roundup sprayed to kill regrowth. 2<sup>nd</sup> rotation <em>P. radiata</em> planted. NPK fertiliser spread around every seedling by hand</li>
<li>1990: Site hand cut the regrowth using brush hooks e.g. eucalypts, acacia and 1<sup>st</sup> rotation pine seedlings</li>
<li>1999: 2<sup>nd</sup> rotation pines thinned and pruned. Thinnings were left on the ground to decay</li>
<li>2003: Area burnt by severe wildfire killed all pines</li>
<li>2003: Sterile rye corn grass seed was sown across the coupe using light aircraft to stabilise erodible soils</li>
<li>2003: Killed pines and native regrowth pushed over and windrowed with a bulldozer</li>
<li>2004: Site declared minimal use - rehabilitation</li>
<li>2005: Contractors were engaged to manually remove pine seedlings - pines were defined as a weed. Other weeds not controlled</li>
<li>2005-2012: Site left to rehabilitate.</li></ul></br>
Simple
Identification info
- Date (Creation)
- 1818-01-01
- Date (Publication)
- 2012-06-30
- Date (Revision)
- 2024-12-16
- Edition
- 1.0
Identifier
Publisher
Author
Contributor
Contributor
- Website
- https://www.tern.org.au/
- Credit
- We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
- Credit
- This work was funded by ACEAS, a facility of Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), an Australian Government National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) project.
- Status
- Completed
Point of contact
Point of contact
- Topic category
-
- Environment
Extent
- Description
- Blundells Flat, Australian Capital Territory, formerly Uriarra Forest pine plantation (State Forest). Comprising Drapers Block, ex-coupe 424 (12.83 ha).
Temporal extent
- Time period
- 1818-01-01 2012-12-31
- Title
- Thackway R. (2013). Transformation of Australia’s vegetated landscapes: the development of VAST-2. Zenodo
- Website
-
Thackway R. (2013). Transformation of Australia’s vegetated landscapes: the development of VAST-2. Zenodo
Related documentation
- Title
- Thackway R. and Specht A. (2015). A system for capturing the effects of land use on vegetation condition. Science for the Total Environment, 534: 14-30
- Website
-
Thackway R. and Specht A. (2015). A system for capturing the effects of land use on vegetation condition. Science for the Total Environment, 534: 14-30
Related documentation
- Maintenance and update frequency
- Not planned
- GCMD Science Keywords
- ANZSRC Fields of Research
- TERN Parameter Vocabulary
- QUDT Units of Measure
- GCMD Horizontal Resolution Ranges
- GCMD Temporal Resolution Ranges
- Keywords (Discipline)
-
- Cropping
- Blade ploughing
- Ring barking
- Sowing buffel grass
- Applying fertiliser
- Grazing cattle
- Grazing sheep
- Pulling brigalow
- Burning pulled brigalow
- Continuous stocking with sheep
- Living with prickly pear
Resource constraints
- Use limitation
- The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license allows others to copy, distribute, display, and create derivative works provided that they credit the original source and any other nominated parties. Details are provided at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- File name
- 88x31.png
- File description
- CCBy Logo from creativecommons.org
- File type
- png
- Title
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
- Alternate title
- CC-BY
- Edition
- 4.0
- Access constraints
- License
- Use constraints
- Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- TERN services are provided on an "as-is" and "as available" basis. Users use any TERN services at their discretion and risk. They will be solely responsible for any damage or loss whatsoever that results from such use including use of any data obtained through TERN and any analysis performed using the TERN infrastructure. <br />Web links to and from external, third party websites should not be construed as implying any relationships with and/or endorsement of the external site or its content by TERN. <br /><br />Please advise any work or publications that use this data via the online form at https://www.tern.org.au/research-publications/#reporting
- Other constraints
- Please cite this dataset as {Author} ({PublicationYear}). {Title}. {Version, as appropriate}. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. Dataset. {Identifier}.
Resource constraints
- Classification
- Unclassified
Distribution Information
Distribution Information
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
Distributor
Distributor
- OnLine resource
- ro-crate-metadata.json
Resource lineage
- Statement
- <br>Information is compiled by year from published and unpublished sources. It includes qualitative and quantitative observations. It represents a structured narrative. Once compiled this narrative is translated into 22 indicators of vegetation condition which are grouped into three condition components: vegetation structure, species composition and regenerative capacity.</br> <br>The pdf is a compilation of historical land use management of the site using 12 core attributes which describes the transformation of a native vegetation community relative to its reference state.</br> <br>The spreadsheet provides the scores on the effects of the land management practices on the 22 indicators. Each indicator is scored from 0 to 1 for each year of the historical record; where 1 represents the reference state for each vegetation and environmental indicator, and 0 is where that vegetation indicator and/or ecological function is absent. The spreadsheet is used to sum and weight the indicators into the respective components of vegetation condition i.e. regenerative capacity, species composition and vegetation structure. The weighted transformation scores are then added to produce a single transformation index of vegetation condition for each year of the historical record. The results could be graphed and annotated to show the response of the plant community under different land use and management regimes.</br>
- Hierarchy level
- Dataset
Process step
- Description
- Step 1. Select a representative site in terms of soil and landscape, and pre-European vegetation community.
Process step
- Description
- Step 2: Locate that site using google earth and record its co-ordinates in the VAST-2 Chronology Datasheet
Process step
- Description
- Step 3: Review relevant literature for the site and region, compiling information on land use history and associated land management practices. Simultaneously record for same year effect and impact of those practices on vegetation condition.
Process step
- Description
- Step 4: Identify a group of specialists with ecological knowledge about the site who can revive, validate and identify gaps in the chronology and the accuracy of the data.
Process step
- Description
- Step 5: Translate the observations from step 4 into 22 separately accessed vegetation condition indicators.
Process step
- Description
- Step 6: Circulate the results of scoring of the 22 indicators and their aggregates including the graphs to the specialists identified in the step 4.
Process step
- Description
- Step 7: Send results to Richard Thackway for incorporation into the ACEAS portal.
Reference System Information
- Reference system identifier
- EPSG/EPSG:4326
- Reference system type
- Geodetic Geographic 2D
Metadata
- Metadata identifier
-
urn:uuid/6ad3c18f-ea73-44ac-9704-899164e4d00b
- Title
- TERN GeoNetwork UUID
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
Point of contact
Type of resource
- Resource scope
- Dataset
- Metadata linkage
-
https://geonetwork.tern.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/6ad3c18f-ea73-44ac-9704-899164e4d00b
Point-of-truth metadata URL
- Date info (Creation)
- 2023-05-10T00:00:00
- Date info (Revision)
- 2024-12-16T00:00:00
Metadata standard
- Title
- ISO 19115-1:2014/AMD 1:2018 Geographic information - Metadata - Fundamentals
- Edition
- 1
Metadata standard
- Title
- ISO/TS 19115-3:2016
- Edition
- 1.0
Metadata standard
- Title
- ISO/TS 19157-2:2016
- Edition
- 1.0
- Title
- Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-3:2016 and ISO 19157-2:2016
- Date (published)
- 2021
- Edition
- 1.0