Plant Functional Type Classification, Richness and Cover in Eucalyptus salubris Woodlands Across Time Since Fire Chronosequence, Great Western Woodlands SuperSite, 2010-2011

Brief description

Plant Functional Types (PFTs) are groupings of plants based on traits relevant to processes of vegetation change, allowing generalised predictions of vegetation responses to similar disturbances elsewhere. Recurrent fire is a dominant disturbance in Mediterranean-climate landscapes, yet there have been no studies of how a PFT classification can enhance understanding of vegetation change due to time since fire in ‘fire-sensitive’ Mediterranean-climate woodlands, where the dominant overstorey trees are typically killed by fire. 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 led to considerable conservation concern regarding the loss of mature woodlands, and has highlighted a need to better understand how plant communities change with time since fire. We measured changes in PFT richness and cover 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.