5-7 July 2007, Tasmania
Buttongrass moorlands are a major landscape feature of western Tasmania and a significant value of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.
Buttongrass moorland covers more than half a million hectares, primarily in western Tasmania where it is a significant landscape feature. Button-grass moorland is a treeless sedgey vegetation typically dominated by buttongrass (Gymnoshoenus sphaerocephulus). Nearly two-thirds of all buttongrass moorland in Tasmania is protected within the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. The buttongrass moorland ecosystem is unique to Tasmania and has only recently been recognised as a world heritage value. Three key features of this ecosystem contribute to its world heritage status.
Firstly, it comprises the only extensive vegetation type dominated by a hummock-forming tussock sedge. Secondly, the presence of burrowing crayfish living in the acidic peats is highly unusual world-wide. Another important feature of the buttongrass moorland ecosystem is that much of it is largely undisturbed by the impacts associated with post-European settlement of Tasmania, although there are concerns about the impacts of inappropriate fire regimes, disease, and global warming.
Other unusual features of buttongrass are:
- The vegetation is highly flammable and may be the most flammable vegetation type in the world
- The peat that underlies the moorland is highly acidic (pH 3.5-4)
- The plants are typically low in nutrient value; indeed, buttongrass itself has the lowest recorded phosphorous levels in its foliage of any plant species.
This workshop will present and celebrate the many unique and diverse values encompassed by the buttongrass moorland ecosystem. Presentations will range from soil formation processes to landscape evolution and the palaeo-environment while also covering the many and varied adaptations of the biota to the environmental extremes of waterlogging, low nutrient availability and flammability of this ecosystem. The ecosystem, juxtaposed as it is in many places to fire sensitive vegetation including significant commercial assets such as the wet forests in State Forest, presents a significant fire hazard. Appropriate and economically viable fire management protocols which deliver both conservation and fire protection outcomes will be a major focus of the workshop. The impact of the root rot plant pathogen, Phytophthora cinnamomi, which has serious and long-term impacts on the moorland ecosystem will also feature in the workshop presentations.
For more information: http://tinyurl.com/2nsu3m