Heard Island: Terrestrial Biology: Documenting vegetation change on Heard Island.

Brief description

2000-01 fieldwork undertaken

Heard Island 53 deg. 05 min. S., 73 deg. 30 min. E. Field area covered: southeast end of island from Long Beach to Gilchrist Beach. 150 GPS control points collected on 1986-1987 airphotos, using handheld GPS unit. To be used for a vegetation mapping project in progress for mapping of Heard Island vegetation communities, along with vegetation quadrat data covering major plant communities of the island. Vegetation quadrat data collected on monitoring sites set up in 1987 to record changes in vegetation, especially the grass Poa annua. Fixed photo-points re-photographed to record aspects of vegetation and glacier-front changes over 12 years. Heard Island environments are changing steadily as global climate change occurs. This project gathered information that will enable completion of a vegetation map for Heard Island; revisited sites studied and marked in 1987 to document changes in vegetation, including colonisation of recently deglaciated land; and provided advice for visitor management protocols to minimise vegetation disturbance. The parts of the island visited were surveyed for new species that may be recently arrived or previously unrecorded, and changes in species which had limited distribution in 1987 were documented.

2003-04 fieldwork undertaken

The fieldwork provides strong evidence of vegetation and habitat changes over the past 16 years, and a sound basis for future monitoring in a dynamic environment sensitive to global change. Work included documentation of 200 photopoints, mapping of limited-distribution plant species, and ground-checking of vegetation mapping from 1987. A solid baseline of 1987 data (photopoints, fixed transects) was remeasured. A new vascular plant species was recorded, Leptinella plumosa, increasing the vascular species list to 12. Differential GPS allowed precise documentation of 200 mapping control points for AADC and accurate locations of all photopoints, species mapping and fixed transects.

Descriptions of data collected for each JJS Data dictionary feature, and additional attributes, are included in metadata notes (word docs) accompanying the DGPS data.

The data associated with this metadata record are as follows:

a) Differential GPS data. The DGPS data in (b) and (c) below originate from these data.

i) Corrected data (Trimble)
ii) Uncorrected data (Trimble)
iii) Shapefiles of the corrected data with original data dictionary IDs
iv) Metadata notes (word doc) for Trimble files

b) Control point data

i) Shapefile of DGPS control points
ii) Metadata notes (word doc) for DGPS control points
iii) Excel file of hand-held control points 2000
iv) Metadata notes (word doc) for hand-held control points 2000
v) Excel file of hand-held control points 2003
vi) Metadata notes (word doc) for hand-held control points 2003

c) Vegetation and miscellaneous data

i) Five shapefiles of DGPS locations for vegetation data and miscellaneous features
ii) One shapefile of hand-held GPS locations for vegetation data.
iii) Metadata notes (word doc) for veg. and misc. data