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Factors influencing species selection for littoral rainforest restoration: Do environmental gradients matter?
Author(s) -
Kooyman Robert,
Rossetto Maurizio
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
ecological management and restoration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.472
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1442-8903
pISSN - 1442-7001
DOI - 10.1111/j.1442-8903.2006.00265.x
Subject(s) - rainforest , littoral zone , ecology , geography , floristics , habitat , species richness , endangered species , range (aeronautics) , vegetation (pathology) , ordination , abundance (ecology) , environmental science , biology , medicine , materials science , pathology , composite material
Summary Littoral rainforest in northern New South Wales, Australia, has been severely reduced in area and is now extremely limited in extent. Factors influencing the floristics, species richness and abundance, and relationship of this coastal rainforest community type to other lowland rainforests are explored. The purpose of the study was to provide ecological information to support (i) the development of management recommendations and assist habitat expansion and restoration planning for a coastal site at Lennox Head, in northern New South Wales, and (ii) the implementation of recovery actions for an endangered ecological community and an endangered tree species. Multivariate analysis techniques were used to classify and ordinate sampled sites relative to environmental variables to provide an explanation for current floristic assemblages. Eight locations at varying distances to the coast, and representing a range of soil types, were chosen to test the influence of selected environmental variables. At the broad scale, the results show that proximity to the coast and altitude were generally correlated and represented the most influential variables; soil depth, topographic position and slope were broadly correlated but markedly less influential; disturbance was a significant but independent influence on floristics; and soil type and aspect had the least influence. The study provided insight into the ecological parameters of a range of species suited to the habitat rehabilitation and restoration project, and identified finer‐scale floristic patterns at the Lennox site that appear to reflect the influence of environmental variables. In that case, areas in closer proximity to the ocean are dominated by several littoral rainforest and disturbance‐related species, and species richness increases relative to distance from the ocean. This highlights the need to be sensitive to landscape variation, and the influence of environmental variables on plant species distributions, and population dynamics and structure, to guide final selection of appropriate plant material for littoral rainforest restoration projects.