Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/19066
Title: A history of Australia's riverine habitats and vegetation
Contributor(s): Reid, Michael  (author)orcid ; Bickford, Sophie (author); Gell, Peter (author); Kenyon, Christine (author)
Publication Date: 2016
Handle Link: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/19066
Abstract: Our understanding of vegetation in Australia's riverine landscapes is greatly enhanced by an understanding of its history and dynamics over long timescales. Individuals and cohorts of structurally dominant riverine plant species, such as 'Eucalyptus camaldulensis' (river red gum), 'E. largiflorens' (black box) and 'E. cooiabah' (coolibah), can live for several hundred years and possess numerous adaptations that allow them to persist through long periods of suboptimal conditions. Similarly, it can take many years for plant taxa to disperse into newly created or transformed habitats within temporally dynamic riverine landscapes. Consequently, it is not possible to fully understand current species distributions and associations without knowledge of past states of riverine vegetation communities as well as their rates and trajectories of change. In contrast, many plants within riverine wetlands respond extremely rapidly to changing water regimes. Drying can desiccate water plants in a matter of days and dry lake beds can be colonised by native and exotic weedy taxa within a few months. Seeds buried in riverine sediments can also respond rapidly to rewetting, providing the period of drying is not prolonged, enabling wetland plant communities to recover. Shifts in the prevalence of rewetting, however, can lead to loss of seed banks over decadal scales and affect the capacity of wetland plant communities to respond to flooding. Changes in water quality can also dramatically affect aquatic ecosystems with increased nutrients, salts and turbidity all capable of inducing vegetation responses.
Publication Type: Book Chapter
Source of Publication: Vegetation of Australian Riverine Landscapes: Biology, Ecology and Management, p. 45-64
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing
Place of Publication: Clayton South, Australia
ISBN: 9780643096318
9780643104525
9780643104532
Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: 050104 Landscape Ecology
060206 Palaeoecology
050101 Ecological Impacts of Climate Change
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: 410206 Landscape ecology
310306 Palaeoecology
410102 Ecological impacts of climate change and ecological adaptation
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2008: 960501 Ecosystem Assessment and Management at Regional or Larger Scales
960999 Land and Water Management of Environments not elsewhere classified
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2020: 180403 Assessment and management of Antarctic and Southern Ocean ecosystems
HERDC Category Description: B1 Chapter in a Scholarly Book
Publisher/associated links: http://trove.nla.gov.au/version/215804070
Editor: Editor(s): Samantha Capon, Cassandra James and Michael Reid
Appears in Collections:Book Chapter

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