Improved timber inventory and strategic forest planning in Papua New Guinea
• The tropical forests of Papua New Guinea (PNG) are a complex natural resource management challe... more • The tropical forests of Papua New Guinea (PNG) are a complex natural resource management challenge. Almost all the 28 million hectares of forests are under customary ownership by local clans or individuals. Forests are important for local livelihoods and an important source of income for the national government. They also have significant value for global conservation of tropical forest biodiversity. Development and use of forest resources is seen by most sectors of the community as an integral component of future national development.
ABSTRACT Ross and Brack (2015) reported the first formal survey of dieback of Eucalyptus viminali... more ABSTRACT Ross and Brack (2015) reported the first formal survey of dieback of Eucalyptus viminalis occurring across the Monaro Plains of south-eastern New South Wales (NSW). The survey found that the dieback covered about 2000 km2 of public and private land, and that there was no significant correlation between the observed dieback and any of the environmental or management parameters studied. Jurskis (2016) claims that the dieback in the Monaro is ‘not difficult to explain’, as it is simply due to the absence of grazing or regular light fire. We argue that this hypothesis cannot explain the ‘Monaro dieback’, and further research is required to determine the underlying cause/s. Since publication of the original survey, the authors have received a wide range of reports from academic and general observers about dieback of various species in various environments across the country. Recent observations now suggest that the ‘Monaro’ dieback has extended beyond the original boundary and into other Eucalyptus species. We emphasise the need for an agency or organisation to act as a central collection point for geographically referenced and time-stamped photographs or descriptions from the public in order to better monitor tree health across the country.
Forestry in a Global Context [Book Review]
Australian Forestry, Dec 1, 2006
Review(s) of: Forestry in a Global Context, by R. Sands, CABI Publishing, 272 pages including I7 ... more Review(s) of: Forestry in a Global Context, by R. Sands, CABI Publishing, 272 pages including I7 pages of indexes ISBN 978 0 85199 089 7 and ISBN 0 85199 089 4, Softcover 25.00, CABI Publishing offers a 20% discount on all forestry titles to members of the Commonwealth Forestry Association.
Australia's national carbon account for afforestation and reforestation activities qualifying und... more Australia's national carbon account for afforestation and reforestation activities qualifying under Article 3.3 of the Kyoto Protocol between 2008 and 2012 can be estimated using a carbon accounting model supported by a range of forest-related data. Using inventories of current plantation areas and projected expansion of the plantation estate, it is possible to project carbon sequestration in 36 known plantation management regimes to give an annual national account of net (sequestration minus emissions) carbon stock change. Data for the modelling were provided through a range of studies undertaken for the development of the National Carbon Accounting System (NCAS). These included compendiums of available information on management regimes, plantation growth and yield, wood density, carbon contents and allocations to nonstem components of trees. Future refinements of the modelling will include the extraction of a 'mask' of relevant afforestation and reforestation activities from the continental multi-temporal Landsat satellite coverages of Australia developed for the NCAS. Other improvements will include the use of the NCAS national annual 1 km grid productivity mapping to determine variability in growth associated with variability in climate and soil characteristics. Soil carbon modelling capability using the Roth C model will also be possible when the spatial mapping is complete and details of plantation areas can be merged with the relevant maps of soils and climate.
Comparing mobile and terrestrial laser scanning for measuring and modelling tree stem taper
Forestry, Mar 24, 2023
Measuring and modelling the shape of tree stems is a fundamental component of forest inventory sy... more Measuring and modelling the shape of tree stems is a fundamental component of forest inventory systems for both commercial and biological purposes. The change in diameter of the stem along its length (a.k.a. 'taper') is one of the most important and widely used means of predicting tree stem volume. Until recently, the options for obtaining accurate estimates of stem taper and developing stem taper models have been limited to measurements of felled trees or the use of optical dendrometers on standing live trees. Here, we tested both a tripod-mounted terrestrial laser scanner (TLS; a Focus 3D 120 of FARO Technologies, Inc., Lake Mary, FL, USA), and a mobile laser scanner (MLS; the ZEB1 of the GeoSLAM Ltd, Nottingham, UK) to measure tree diameters at various heights along the stem of 20 destructively harvested broadleaf and needleleaf species using the outer hull modelling method, for the purpose of developing individual-tree and species-specific taper models. Laser scanner specificati...
The national arboretum Canberra: Designing a place of renewal
Summary The experience and best guesses of forestry personnel in the Inverell District of NSW wer... more Summary The experience and best guesses of forestry personnel in the Inverell District of NSW were used to compile a list of commercial sawlog volumes in each compartment of a large management area comprising 430 000 ha of forest and woodland. The data were stored in a standard format in a newly developed Forested Area Management Information System (FAMIS) and then sampled to determine whether the guessed volumes were correlated with inventory based estimates. The correlations were strong and allowed estimates of sawlog volumes by compartment to be derived with confidence limits of ± 13% of the mean for a total cost of less than $0.50/ha.
Data Collection and Management for Tree Assets in Urban Environments
Climate Change and Australia's plantation estate: Analysis of vulnerability and preliminary investigation of adaptation options
National forest inventories and biodiversity monitoring in Australia
Plant Biosystems, Mar 1, 2007
Forests currently cover over 20% of the Australian continent and are an important resource, subje... more Forests currently cover over 20% of the Australian continent and are an important resource, subject to a wide range of economic and environmental pressures. These lands support substantial numbers of forest-dependent species with national forest inventories providing important information on biodiversity. National scale information on these forests has been collected or collated since 1988 under the National Forest Inventory (NFI)
Background: Currently, the common and feasible way to estimate the most accurate forest biomass r... more Background: Currently, the common and feasible way to estimate the most accurate forest biomass requires ground measurements and allometric models. Previous studies have been conducted on allometric equations development for estimating tree aboveground biomass (AGB) of tropical dipterocarp forests (TDFs) in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo). However, before the use of existing equations, a validation for the selection of the best allometric equation is required to assess the model bias and precision. This study aims at evaluating the validity of local and pantropical equations; developing new allometric equations for estimating tree AGB in TDFs of Kalimantan; and validating the new equations using independent datasets. Methods: We used 108 tree samples from destructive sampling to develop the allometric equations, with maximum tree diameter of 175 cm and another 109 samples from previous studies for validating our equations. We performed ordinary least squares linear regression to explore the relationship between the AGB and the predictor variables in the natural logarithmic form. Results: This study found that most of the existing local equations tended to be biased and imprecise, with mean relative error and mean absolute relative error more than 0.1 and 0.3, respectively. We developed new allometric equations for tree AGB estimation in the TDFs of Kalimantan. Through a validation using an independent dataset, we found that our equations were reliable in estimating tree AGB in TDF. The pantropical equation, which includes tree diameter, wood density and total height as predictor variables performed only slightly worse than our new models. Conclusions: Our equations improve the precision and reduce the bias of AGB estimates of TDFs. Local models developed from small samples tend to systematically bias. A validation of existing AGB models is essential before the use of the models.
CAMFor (Carbon Accounting Model for Forests) is a sophisticated spreadsheet model developed to as... more CAMFor (Carbon Accounting Model for Forests) is a sophisticated spreadsheet model developed to assist in carbon accounting and projection. This model can integrate information from a range of alternate sources including user input, default parameters and third party model outputs to calculate the carbon flows associated with a stand of trees and the wood products derived from harvests of that stand. Carbon is tracked in the following pools: * Biomass (stemwood, branches, bark, fine and coarse roots, leaves and twigs) * Soil (organic matter and inert charcoal) * Debris (coarse and fine litter, slash, below ground dead material) * Products (waste wood, sawn timber, paper, biofuel, reconstituted wood products). These pools can be tracked following thinning, fires and over multiple rotations. A sensitivity module has been developed to assist examination of the important assumptions and inputs. This paper reviews the functionality of CAMFor and reports on its use in a case study to explore the precision of estimates of carbon sequestration in a eucalypt plantation. Information on variability in unbiased models, measurement accuracy and other sources of error are combined in a sensitivity analysis to estimate the overall precision of sequestration estimates.
A generalised hybrid process-empirical model for predicting plantation forest growth
Forest Ecology and Management, 2007
... To utilise the valuable empirical data contained in yield tables, while also capturing the ef... more ... To utilise the valuable empirical data contained in yield tables, while also capturing the effects of process drivers, a hybrid model has been developed that integrates: • a spatially and temporally explicit site class index based on a process model,. ...
This paper reviews the literature concerning forest and woodland structure at the scale of an ind... more This paper reviews the literature concerning forest and woodland structure at the scale of an individual stand. Stand structure is defined in terms of structural attributes and stand structural complexity. Stand structural complexity is considered to be a measure of the number of different attributes present and the relative abundance of each of these attributes. The review indicates there is no definitive suite of structural attributes; different authors emphasise subsets of different attributes, and relatively few studies provide quantitative evidence linking attributes to the provision of faunal habitat or other measures of biodiversity, although a number of studies identify attributes that distinguish between successional stages. A summary of key structural attributes identified in the literature is presented under the following stand elements: foliage arrangement, canopy cover, tree diameter, tree height, tree spacing, tree species, stand biomass, understorey vegetation, and deadwood. Indices of structural complexity are also reviewed. Three types of index framework are identified: indices based on the cumulative score of attributes; indices based on the average score of groups of attributes; and indices based on the interaction of attributes. The review identifies a variety of different indices under each of these frameworks with no single index preferred over the others. The most prominent of these indices are discussed in detail and the following guidelines suggested for the development of an index of structural complexity: (1) Start with a comprehensive set of structural attributes, in which there is a demonstrated association between attributes and the elements of biodiversity that are of interest. (2) Use a simple mathematical system to construct the index; this facilitates the use of multiple attributes and interpretation of the index in terms of real stand conditions. (3) Score attributes relative to the range of values occurring in stands of a comparable vegetation community. (4) Try different weightings of attributes in the index, adopting those weightings which most clearly distinguish between stands.
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Papers by C. Brack