The Pittwater plantation is a major field site used by the CRC
for Forestry, in partnership with CSIRO and the Australian
Government Department for Climate Change to investigate
Eucalyptus plantation productivity under various
environmental conditions.
The plantation is located approximately 18 km east of Hobart in
south-easternTasmania (right). The site was originally a pony club
arena, and had had no vegetation growing on it for five to ten
years. Initially established in September 2002, as a project of the
CRC for
Sustainable Production Forestry, to investigate fine root
development in Eucalyptus globulus growing in sandy soil
it has had immense success, with many publications arising from the
work, and is now home to many other ongoing experiments. In 2005 an
ARC linkage project to investigate competition between trees of
different size classes was also established. In 2006 defoliation
experiments were also set up in an attempt to model tree
physiological responses (especially carbohydrate allocation) to
insect attack.
Project leaders are Dr Michael Battaglia and Dr Caroline
Mohammed of CSIRO. They head up a team of 13 scientists that work
on about half a dozen different experiments and has yielded 23
publications. A brief profile for each member can be viewed
here.
The climate is monitored by an automatic weather station, which
is located 100 m north of the site. It measures temperature,
humidity, solar radiation, wind speed and rainfall. Climate
variables at Pittwater have been found to be as follows:
-
Average 35 year rainfall is 512 mm.
-
Annual Class A pan evaporation 1320 mm.
(The Class A evaporation pan is a universally used standard-sized
pan with a diameter of 1.2 m and a depth of 250 mm. When installed,
it is elevated 150 mm off the ground. The operating water level is
175-200 mm deep; therefore, the water level in the pan is kept
50-75 mm from the rim. A stilling well located on the side of a
Class A pan has a level sensor which is used to record subsequent
water differentials after evaporation has occured)
-
Summer (January) maximum temperatures of 22.3C
-
Summer (January) minimum temperatures of 11.8C
-
Winter (July) maximum temperatures of 12.2C
-
Winter (July) minimum temperatures of 4.0C
