Hunter, John, and Addicott, Eda (2021) Poplar box woodlands of Eastern Australia: an assessment of a threatened ecological community within the IVC framework. Vegetation Classification and Survey, 2. pp. 241-255.

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Abstract

Aims: Ecosystems nationally at risk in Australia are listed under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act (EPBC Act), and many cross State jurisdictional boundaries. The determination of these ecosystems across the State boundaries are based on expert knowledge. The International Vegetation Classification has the potential to be useful as a cross-jurisdictional hierarchy which also gives global perspective to ecosystems.

Study Area: All bioregions that include Eucalyptus populnea as a dominant or major component of woodlands across the species known distribution.

Methods: We use plot-based data (455 plots) from two states (Queensland and New South Wales) in eastern Australia and quantitative classification methods to assess the definition and description for the Poplar Box Woodland ecosystem type (hereafter “ecological community” or “community”) that is listed as endangered under the EPBC Act. Analyses were conducted using kR-CLUSTER methods to generate alliances. Within these alliances, analyses were undertaken to define associations using agglomerative hierarchical clustering and similarity profile testing (SIMPROF). We then explore how assigning this community into the IVC hierarchy may provide a mechanism for linking Australian communities, defined at the association and alliance levels, to international communities at risk.

Results: We define three alliances and 23 associations based on the results of floristic analysis. Using the standard rule-set of the IVC system, we found that the IVC hierarchy was a useful instrument in correlating ecological communities across jurisdictional boundaries where different classification systems are used. It is potentially important in giving a broader understanding of communities that may be at risk continentally and globally.

Conclusions: We conclude that the IVC hierarchy can incorporate Australian communities at the association level into useful units at higher levels, and provides a useful classification tool for Australian ecosystems.

Item ID:	73024
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2683-0671
Keywords:	Australia, ecological community, International Vegetation Classification, New South Wales, Queensland, woodland
Copyright Information:	Copyright John T. Hunter, Eda Addicott. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Date Deposited:	10 May 2022 05:08
FoR Codes:	31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310308 Terrestrial ecology @ 100%
SEO Codes:	18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1806 Terrestrial systems and management > 180606 Terrestrial biodiversity @ 100%
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