Biological Surveys of South Australia, Vegetation Surveys 

The Biological Databases of South Australia (BDBSA) is South Australia's flora and fauna database that stores and manages specimen and observation records. This record is a subset, focusing on the methodology known as the 'Biological Survey of South Australia Vegetation Surveys' and forms an important component of the BDBSA. This dataset includes vegetation structural attributes, observations on individual plants such as stem diameter, growth form, plant height, and plant community measures such as crown density, canopy cover, as well as plant occurrence data. Preliminary data associated with site description that include soil and landform related parameters are also included in this record. The resulting dataset provides a comprehensive record of plant diversity across sites ground-truthed during a diverse range of biological survey projects undertaken in South Australia and provides a basis for future updating of mapping or other relevant work such as species modelling. Only validated BDBSA data is made publicly available and all records of sensitive taxa have been masked from the dataset. Data is accessible from the TERN Data Infrastructure, which provides the ability to extract subsets of vegetation data across multiple data collections and bioregions for more than 31 variables including stem diameter, tree crown extent, and number of individual plants. 

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. 

Data collected using the Biological Survey of SA methodology aims to substantially improve knowledge and management of the biodiversity of South Australia, as well as track the direction of long-term ecological change by:

• determining the distribution of plant and terrestrial vertebrate species
• systematically surveying the range of major habitats via quadrat-based sampling
• collecting opportunistic data by active searching away from established quadrats
• assessing vegetation and fauna condition
• establishing baseline data for future monitoring
• producing structural and floristic vegetation maps

 

The methods followed here are described at BDBSA Vegetation Surveys, which contribute data to the Biological Databases of South Australia. Detailed guidelines for the selection of survey sites, plot physical description, including soil, landform and associated vegetation are covered in this manual.

For site-specific metadata details, please see the BDBSA project list and metadata available at BDBSA Project List and Metadata.

A summary of the methods applicable for vegetation surveys are listed on the TERN Linked Data's BDBSA – Controlled Vocabularies.