annual report 2011 - Forestry Tasmania

warra
Warra Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site
Dr Simon Grove
Forestry Tasmania Warra Research Co-ordinator
Simon.Grove@forestrytas.com.au
The Warra LTER site of 15,900 ha was designated in 1995 to
as part of a wider study examining the effects of forest
encourage long-term ecological research and monitoring
disturbances on soil fluxes of non-CO 2
greenhouse
in wet forests in Tasmania. The site is supported by eight
gases.
LTER site partners from Tasmanian and national research
agencies. Continuing projects are listed at www.warra.com
Major activities for 2010-11
Documented the variation in coarse woody debris of
Provided summer student scholarship to Simon Ong to
sort, mount and identify beetles.
Hosted visits to Warra LTER during Science Week.
Dr Tim Wardlaw and University of Melbourne students
Benedikt Fest and Julio Najera-Umana discussing soil chamber
measurements at the Warra flux site.
mature forest and older silvicultural regeneration in
terms of landscape context and the landscape prior to
modern forestry.
Analysed and documented the response of vascular
plants in mature and older silvicultural regeneration
to landscape context and other attributes of site and
landscape.
Analysed and documented changes in saproxylic
beetle fauna during the first 10 years of the succession
in mature and regrowth logs.
Gained substantial funding from the Terrestrial
Ecosystem Research Network to allow construction
of a carbon flux tower at Warra, and establish Warra
as a Supersite. Gave support for the University of
Melbourne to run an automatic chamber system to
measure soil CO 2
and trace gas fluxes at the carbon
flux-tower site at Warra.
Completed three seasonal field campaigns of a
collaborative study with University of Melbourne
PhD student (Benedikt Fest) to measure soil fluxes of
methane and nitrous oxide in chronosequence plots
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