Blandfordia

Friday 10th. July 2009

Speaker:

Dr Ross Peacock

Topic:

Patterns of long-term recovery in vegetation following logging

Background:

Ross Peacock is a plant ecologist employed by the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change, based at Macquarie University in the Department of Biological Sciences. Ross and his team of researchers have projects which include a study of the impacts of climate change on North Coast plant communities, the development of predictive models of the distribution of vegetation in north western NSW for the catchment authorities and the development of biodiversity monitoring systems for production forests in Tasmania.

Ross has worked for a wide range of forest management and nature conservation agencies in Tasmania, Victoria and NSW. For his PhD, Ross examined how vegetation in Tasmania responded to the application of different logging systems used on steep slopes, for example how cable logging differed from conventional ground based systems. He will describe the results of work he commenced in Victoria in the late 1980’s and Tasmania in the early 1990’s which examines how vegetation communities respond to logging disturbance, work which has continued using the original study sites. Ross will also overview work in progress describing how cool temperate rainforests logged in the 1940’s and 1950’s in northern NSW (and since incorporated into the reserve network) are recovering and potentially responding to the effects of global warming.