Regrowth wet eucalypt forest showing fire-killed tree from the 1934 wildfire Image: Pep Turner

The Wildfire Chronosequence Project is a joint initiative of Forestry Tasmania, University of Tasmania School of Plant Science and the Bushfire CRC. The overall aim of the project is to investigate successional processes in the fire-adapted wet eucalypt forest landscape of southern Tasmania, to enable the development of methods for managing structural complexity and fire-dependent biodiversity in the production forest landscape and in adjacent protected areas. To research suitable sites, the project utilised a fire/stand history map derived from a range of previous studies (not all of them directly concerned with fire ecology). This, and complementary research, resulted in identifying suitable sites located in regrowth forest derived from major wildfires in 1898, 1934 and 1966/67, as well as equivalent sites in forest that had not experienced wildfire in over 150 years (‘old-growth’) and forest regenerating following clearfell, burn and sow silviculture in 1966 and 2000/2003. This amounts to six disturbance treatments in total, each comprising one site representative of a northerly to westerly aspect and another representative of a southerly to easterly aspect. Permanent plots (50 m x 50 m) have been established in each of these sites, each within a 100 m width external buffer. For each plot, surveys of stand structure, coarse woody debris and biodiversity are being undertaken.