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 Eucalyptus salubris woodlands, Great Western Woodlands site. The data represents changes in plant diversity due to disturbance with time since fire in a chronosequence. 

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.

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. 

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 km². 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 Eucalyptus salubris 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. 

Data not provided.