Ba. Wilson et Rj. Fensham, A COMPARISON OF CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS FOR THE CONSERVATION OF SPARSELY WOODED PLAINS ON MELVILLE-ISLAND, NORTHERN AUSTRALIA, Australian Geographer, 25(1), 1994, pp. 18-31
A floristic quadrat study of sparsely wooded plains on western Melvill
e Island was conducted and used to define and describe floristic and s
tructural vegetation types and identify their associated environmental
correlates. The results were compared with an existing land-unit surv
ey of the area in order to identify the relative merits of these schem
es for conservation planning. All schemes identify a range of broad st
ructural types including Acacia shrubland, Grevillea pteridifolia low
woodland, Lophostemon lactifluus low woodland, and Banksia dentata low
woodland. However, some of the structural and land-unit types are com
posed of two plant communities with distinctive environmental relation
s. Despite being structurally distinctive, some community types are fl
oristically indistinguishable from surrounding forest dominated by Euc
alyptus miniata and E. tetrodonta. The number of species captured by r
andomly selecting sites from each classificatory type revealed little
difference between schemes. All the classificatory approaches were les
s effective at species capture than a simple iterative procedure. Some
of the plant communities seem to be unique and require preservation i
nitiatives in the face of current forestry operations and planned hort
icultural development.