A COMPARISON OF CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS FOR THE CONSERVATION OF SPARSELY WOODED PLAINS ON MELVILLE-ISLAND, NORTHERN AUSTRALIA

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.