FT in international biodiversity research

Hans Drielsma, Executive General Manager

TASMANIAN scientists will be part of an international team to undertake ground breaking research into ways to maximise biodiversity in variable retention harvesting.

The research has been made possible through a three-year Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage grant of $355,000.

The grant has been awarded to a team including Forestry Tasmania research officer Sue Baker, who will work with FT principal research officer Tim Wardlaw, and two University of Tasmania scientists: plant ecologist Greg Jordan from Plant Sciences and geneticist Chris Burridge from the Zoology School. Also on the team will be leading US forest ecologists Jerry Franklin and Tom Spies.

Dr Franklin led the development of variable retention methods now being used around the world and Dr Spies is part of the science panel that advised FT on variable retention methods.

Dr Baker and the team will research managing variable retention harvesting to maintain forest biodiversity and the effects of forest influence and successional stage on regeneration and recolonisation of harvested areas by plants and animals.

One of the main objectives of variable retention is that aggregates provide sources for colonisation by plants and animals into harvested areas when conditions become suitable. At present our knowledge is largely theoretical and the research will provide empirical evidence for aggregated retention planning.

Dr Baker and the team will look at the retention and spread of plants, birds and beetles.

Dr Baker will also travel to the US next year to take up a World Forestry Institute fellowship which will include analysis of data from around the world.

In Tasmania a PhD student will research beetles using traditional identification methods and DNA bar coding. A second PhD student will research plants and an ornithologist will be contracted to investigate birds.

Because aggregated retention coups are as yet too immature to show a clear picture, the research will be conducted in areas harvested by clearfelling in the 1980s. Plots of varying distances into harvested forest will be surveyed to show how far different groups are moving in from the unlogged edges of the harvested areas.

The results of the research will help in the design of coupes to get the balance right to enable species to continue to exist in the aggregates and maximise their ability to recolonise the harvested areas.

The research will also look how this varies depending on the age of the forest. The team believes that forest influence will be particularly important for the recovery of harvested old growth forests while in younger successional areas, forest influence may be less relevant as it is thought they recover faster.

The results of the research will potentially help determine designs of aggregated retention to best suit different types of forest to give the best forest influence to maintain and spread biodiversity.