Great Western Woodlands, Changes in Plant Diversity Indices, Composition and Cover in Eucalyptus salubris Woodlands Across Time Since Fire Chronosequence, 2012
The data set contains information on plant diversity indices, species composition, vegetation cover and edaphic properties from the <i>Eucalyptus salubris</i> woodlands, Great Western Woodlands site. The data represents changes in plant diversity due to disturbance with time since fire in a chronosequence.
Simple
Identification info
- Date (Creation)
- 2010-07-01
- Date (Publication)
- 2011-12-01
- Date (Revision)
- 2025-12-11
- Edition
- 1
Identifier
Publisher
Author
CSIRO Land and Water (2014-2022) - Gosper, Carl ()
147 Underwood Avenue, Floreat, 6014, Western Australia, Australia
Floreat
Western Australia
6014
Australia
Co-author
CSIRO Land and Water (2014-2022) - Prober, Suzanne Mary (Senior Principal Research Scientist)
147 Underwood Avenue, Floreat, 6014, Western Australia, Australia
Floreat
Western Australia
6014
Australia
Co-author
Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, Western Australian Government - Yates, Colin ()
Locked Bag 104 , Bentley Delivery Centre , 6983, Western Australia, Australia
Bentley Delivery Centre
Western Australia
6983
Australia
- Website
- https://www.tern.org.au/
- Purpose
- Disturbances are important ecosystem processes affecting patterns of species diversity (including species richness, diversity and evenness) and community composition. Determining appropriate disturbance regimes for particular ecosystems is thus an important issue for natural resource management. There have been few studies of the response of plant species composition and diversity to fire in ‘fire-sensitive’ Mediterranean-climate woodlands, where the dominant overstorey trees are typically killed by fire, resulting in dense post-fire recruitment. The Great Western Woodlands (GWW) region of south-western Australia supports the world’s largest remaining area of Mediterranean-climate woodland, which in mosaic with mallee, shrublands and salt lakes cover an area of 160,000 km<sup>2</sup>. Eucalyptus woodlands in this region are typically fire-sensitive, and fire return intervals recorded over recent decades have been much shorter than the long-term average. This has lead to considerable conservation concern regarding the loss of mature woodlands, and has highlighted a need to better understand how plant species composition and diversity changes with time since fire. We measured changes in diversity indices and floristic composition in <i>Eucalyptus salubris</i> woodlands with increasing time since fire at 72, 50 x 50 m plots using a space-for-time approach. To estimate stand ages for this study we used satellite imagery, growth ring counts and relationships between growth ring counts and plant size, resulting in an estimated time since fire range sampled of 3 to 370 years.
- 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
- <br></br>Funding: (1) Australian Supersite Network, part of the Australian Government’s Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Network https://portal.tern.org.au/, a research infrastructure facility established under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy and Education Infrastructure Fund - Super Science Initiative - through the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education. (2) A biodiversity and cultural conservation strategy for the Great Western Woodlands, Western Australian Department of Environment and Conservation; Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Network.
- Status
- Completed
Point of contact
CSIRO Land and Water (2014-2022) - Gosper, Carl ()
147 Underwood Avenue, Floreat, 6014, Western Australia, Australia
147 Underwood Avenue
Floreat
Western Australia
6014
Australia
- Topic category
-
- Biota
- Environment
Extent
- Description
- The Great Western Woodlands site was established in 2012 on Credo Station, 110 km NNW of Kalgoorlie, WA.
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Temporal extent
- Time period
- 2010-07-01 2011-12-01
- Maintenance and update frequency
- Not planned
- GCMD Science Keywords
- ANZSRC Fields of Research
- TERN Platform Vocabulary
- TERN Parameter Vocabulary
- QUDT Units of Measure
- GCMD Horizontal Resolution Ranges
- GCMD Temporal Resolution Ranges
- Australian Plant Name Index
- Keywords (Discipline)
-
- Edaphic properties
- Plant diversity indices
- Eucalyptus woodlands
- Great Western Woodlands
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}.
- Other constraints
- Please note: This data has been migrated “as is” from TERN’s SuperSite data portal. Minimal quality assessment has been applied to this data. Please contact the dataset authors for queries regarding the data.
Resource constraints
- Classification
- Unclassified
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
- NetCDF
Distributor
Distributor
- OnLine resource
- GreatWesternWoodlands_Gimlet_Vegetation_Plot
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
- NetCDF
Distributor
Distributor
- OnLine resource
- GreatWesternWoodlands_Gimlet_Species_details
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
- NetCDF
Distributor
Distributor
- OnLine resource
- GreatWesternWoodlands_Gimlet_dataDictionary
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
- NetCDF
Distributor
Distributor
- OnLine resource
- GreatWesternWoodlands_Gimlet_SoilDetails
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
- NetCDF
Distributor
Distributor
- OnLine resource
- GreatWesternWoodlands_Gimlet_VegetationDiversity_Area_data
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
- NetCDF
Distributor
Distributor
- OnLine resource
- GreatWesternWoodlands_Gimlet_VegetationDiversity_data_2012
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
Distributor
Distributor
Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd, Indooroopilly, QLD, Australia, 4068
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
- OnLine resource
- ro-crate-metadata.json
Resource lineage
- Statement
- (1) Floristic sampling:- For each plot we recorded the vascular plant taxa present and estimated their abundance by systematically placing a 12.5 mm diameter pole vertically at 50 points per plot, each 3 m apart, and recording the identity of all plants with live parts intercepting the pole. Sixteen of these points were placed along each of the two sides of the 50 x 50 m plot commencing at the north-west corner, with the remaining 18 points placed along the diagonal starting in the same corner. This technique provided an objective measure of abundance reflecting but not equivalent to protective cover. Species that were present but not recorded at point intercepts were allocated a nominal proportional abundance of 1%.<br></br> (2) Diversity indices:- PRIMER analysis software (Version 6.1.11) was used to derive diversity indices for floristic plot data. We tallied total species number per plot (species density), and using cover data, calculated the Shannon diversity index (logex) and Pielou’s evenness index.<br></br> (3) Soil sampling: (a) A single bulked sample of the top 10 cm of soil was taken from aggregation of multiple 2 cm diameter sub-samples collected from throughout each of 52, 50 x 50 m plots sampled in spring 2010. Samples were stored at ~4°C until delivery to the CSBP Futurefarm analytical laboratories (Bibra Lake, WA), where they were thoroughly mixed, air dried at 40°C, and ground to pass through a 2 mm sieve.<br></br> (b) Analyses were undertaken on each bulked sample as follows (where given, method numbers apply to Rayment GE & Higginson FR 1992, Australian Laboratory Handbook of Soil and Water Chemical Methods. Inkata Press, Melbourne): available phosphorus (Colwell method, bicarbonate-extractable phosphorus - manual colour, 9B1), potassium (Colwell method, bicarbonate-extractable potassium, 18A1), ammonium and nitrate (measured simultaneously using Lachat Flow Injection Analyser, soil:solution ratio 1:5, 1M KCl, indophenol blue, Searle 1984, Analyst 109:549-568; and with copperized-cadmium column reduction), organic carbon (Walkley and Black method, 6A1), extractable sulphur (40°C for 3 hours, 0.25M KCl, measured by ICP; Blair et al. 1991, Aust J Soil Res 29:619–626), pH (1:5 soil/0.01M CaCl<sub>2</sub>, 4B2) and conductivity (1:5 soil:water extract, 3A1).<br></br> (4) Sampling Study Extent: Plots were sampled on the date at which they were established. Two times since fire are shown in plot details for all plots: 1) Time since fire as determined from analysis of Landsat imagery. This truncated the true time since fire for plots last burnt that were more than ~ 60 years ago. 2) Estimated time since fire of plots burnt > 38 years ago based on growth ring counts and growth ring-size relationships, using Model 2 of Gosper et al. (in press). Further detail on methods to determine the time since fire of plots can be found in: Gosper, C.R., Prober, S.M., Yates, C.J. and Wiehl, G. (2013) Estimating the time since fire of long-unburnt <i>Eucalyptus salubris</i> (Myrtaceae) stands in the Great Western Woodlands. Australian Journal of Botany 61, 11-21.<br></br> (5) Sampling description: Each of the 72 plots was 50 x 50 m, with sides aligned north-south and east-west and with a steel dropper placed in the north-west corner. Plots were placed in relatively uniform vegetation within 1 km of vehicular tracks on public land; Nature Reserves, Unallocated Crown Land or Unmanaged Reserves. Plots were spaced at least 250 m apart, and at least 500 m apart for plot of the same time since fire. Further detail on the sampling can be found in: Gosper, C.R., Yates, C.J. and Prober, S.M. (2013), Floristic diversity in fire-sensitive eucalypt woodlands shows a ‘U’-shaped relationship with time since fire. Journal of Applied Ecology doi: 10.1111/1365-2664.12120
- Hierarchy level
- Dataset
Reference System Information
- Reference system identifier
- EPSG/EPSG:4326
- Reference system type
- Geodetic Geographic 2D
Metadata
- Metadata identifier
-
urn:uuid/d5ccc9fa-ef81-42b7-b4c0-28d6ed43098b
- 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/d5ccc9fa-ef81-42b7-b4c0-28d6ed43098b
Point-of-truth metadata URL
- Date info (Creation)
- 2023-03-15T00:00:00.000000+00:00
- Date info (Revision)
- 2025-12-11T22:38:19.443994+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
Identifier
Overviews
Spatial extent
N
S
E
W
Provided by
Associated resources
Not available