Sustaining plantation production
A workshop in Perth on 5 December,
“sustaining plantation production: a review” was a
great example of how CRCs can deliver science that is both highly
relevant to industry needs and scientifically
challenging….
[read
more]
Comment by External Science Reviewer
Dr David Whitehead conducted an external science
review of Research Programme One and presented it at the CRC for
Forestry Annual Science Meeting in July.
He found that work is well underway and that the
programme is productive, relevant and likely to provide major
science breakthroughs....
[read
more]
Industry insights from Queensland
 The Queensland Department of Primary Industries
and Fisheries is focused upon the considerable challenge of seeing
a large hardwood plantation estate established in Queensland. Its
participation with the CRC for Forestry is a critical platform in
the department’s approach to develop strategic partnerships
and alliances across the primary industries sector…
[read
more]
New Australian forestry sector weed management project
Karina Potter, a CSIRO scientist with experience
in weed research and modelling, is launching a research project to
address weed management issues for the Australian forestry
sector...
[read
more]
New scientific papers
Six new scientific papers are available from
Programme One, covering leaf area and sub-tropical hardwood
species; transpiration, photosynthesis, respiration, leaf
development and environmental stress in Tasmanian blue gum;
predicting Mycosphaerellaleaf disease severity using
remote sensing; and weed distribution...
[read more]
Latest conference proceedings
Programme One scientists were active in
Australia, South Africa, France, Canada and Austria. Many of the
latest conference publications are available for download...
[read more]
Project news
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Site evaluation (subproject
1.1.1)
Collecting soils data is hard and expensive.
Can we use our knowledge of soil formation and landscape models to
get more value from our hard earned information? Project
1.1.1 has been road testing a new method of predicting soil depth.
While theories seem good, tests so far have not been supportive.
However, site evaluation researchers have some good ideas as to how
this might be improved....
[read more]
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Remote sensing
(subproject 1.1.2)
Real progress has been made in the team’s
capability to show forest health on a map. At the same time, work
so far has raised questions about many aspects of forest health
modelling and the representation of forest health.
Recent work has focussed upon using satellite
image data to create a single scene forest health map over the
Green Hills pine plantation in southern New South Wales...
[read more]
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New Australian forest LiDAR wiki
(airborne remote sensing: subproject
1.1.3)
Land managers will be able to learn more about
LiDAR, find data suppliers and current users of the technology, and
explore sample datasets with the new Australian forest LiDAR wiki
that has been developed by sub-project 1.1.3. 'Australian Forest
LiDAR’ is scheduled to go live on the CRC for Forestry
website this summer and has been constructed using the same wiki
technology as that used by the wikipedia website. This means that
the site can be maintained by the people who use it and it can
easily be extended past the life of our project.
[read
more]
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Sustaining site resources
(subproject 1.2.1)
With increased concern about drying of the
Australian climate and the potential for plantation expansion to
affect groundwater resources and stream flows, focus is upon the
water use efficiency of plantations.Scientists in subproject
1.2.1 are drawing upon work conducted over the past 13 years,
spanning three consecutive CRCs (Temperate Hardwood Forestry,
Sustainable Production Forestry, Forestry), to examine water use
efficiency in plantations in Tasmania and Western Australia.
[read
more]
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Forest health
(subproject 1.2.2)
Insect defoliation has the potential to reduce
tree growth but its effects are often difficult to quantify
experimentally. How confident can we be that plants respond
similarly to artificial and insect defoliation? To help answer this
question, CRC for Forestry PhD student Audrey Quentin conducted a
glasshouse experiment comparing the effects of artificial
defoliation and defoliation by southern eucalyptus leaf beetle on
Tasmanian blue gum...
[read
more]
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The impacts of weeds on forest productivity
will be investigated with the establishment of paired plots in
Tasmania and in the Green Triangle; and work is underway to
identify weed communities in order to simplify the representation
of weeds in models.
Project 1.3 also teamed up with Forestry
Tasmania to examine processes controlling understorey water use in
the Florentine Valley...
[read more]
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How do trees in the subtropics compare to those
in temperate Australia? Project 1.4 measured daily patterns
of water stress in young Eucalyptus pellita plantations in
the Top End and found that after significant daytime stress during
the dry seasons, trees recover to a stress free state
overnight....
[read
more]
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Staff news
Belgian affiliate student Kim Calders visited scientists in
Clayton, Victoria, and worked on leaf area analysis; Tammi Short
joined subproject 1.2.1 (“sustaining site resources”);
and Dr Karina Potter of CSIRO is launching a research project to
address weed management issues for the Australian forestry
sector.
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