Poplar box woodlands of Eastern Australia: an assessment of a threatened ecological community within the IVC framework

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. Taxonomic reference: PlantNET (http://plantnet/10rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/) [accessed June 2019]. Abbreviations: EPBC Act = Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act; IVC = International Vegetation Classification; NMDS = non-metric multidimensional scaling; NSW = New South Wales; PCT = Plant Community Type; QLD = Queensland; RE = Regional Vegetation Community; SIMPER = similarity percentage analysis; SIMPROF = Similarity profile analysis.

A plot-based analysis of the vegetation of the Northern Territory, Australia: a first assessment within the International Vegetation Classification framework

“…The IVC enables classification that is data-driven, with implications for key areas of national-level science and policymaking. Hunter and Addicott (2021) have highlighted some of the many current issues around different jurisdictional methodologies and how this can significantly affect our understanding of threatened vegetation types. To better comprehend both the true distribution of mid-scale vegetation types and their rarity and threat, we require a unified approach and, even better, is an approach that allows direct global comparisons and understandings.…”

“…With this, the ability to undertake comprehensive floristic ecological analyses based on a hierarchical schema has become feasible. The International Vegetation Classification (IVC) is one such system, and it has already been employed in several published Australian case-studies (Hunter and Addicott 2021;Muldavin et al 2021).…”

“…For example, recently, a continental floristic plot-based analysis using IVC protocols was performed within two major vegetation types, Eucalyptus tetrodonta Woodland and Triodia Hummock Grasslands, both of which have extensive distributions within the NT and across Australian jurisdictions (Muldavin et al 2021). The use of the IVC structure and methodology has been shown to be useful across a wide range of vegetation types within Australia in recent years and its use promoted as a way forward in cross jurisdictional understanding of vegetation (Hunter and Lechner 2017;Gellie et al 2018;Hunter 2020;Hunter and Addicott 2021;Lewis et al 2021a;Muldavin et al 2021).…”