Forest Recovery Trajectories from Passive and Active Reforestation on the Atherton Uplands

29 passive regrowth and 25 active planting sites, aged 1-67 years, provide a chronosequence for analyzing tropical forest recovery in Australia's Atherton Tableland. Field surveys conducted between 2008 and 2013 measured structural attributes like canopy cover, height, wood volume, and stem density. The dataset, associated with the NERP TE 12.2 project, compares these sites against pasture and rainforest reference sites to evaluate restoration outcomes.

Use Cases

• Modeling time lags in forest structure recovery based on site age and restoration method.
• Identifying slow-to-recover forest attributes like species density or community composition from the measured floristic data.
• Comparing biomass accumulation trajectories between passive regrowth and active planting sites.
• Informing restoration practice modifications by analyzing potential barriers to recovery suggested by the data.

Strengths

• Includes a chronosequence of 54 reforestation sites with ages spanning 1 to 67 years.
• Provides comparative data from five pasture and eight rainforest reference sites for context.
• Measures multiple structural attributes per site: canopy cover, height, wood volume, and woody stem density across defined dbh categories.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data collection occurred in specific field campaigns between 2008 and 2013; current conditions may differ.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network (via data.gov.au), associated with NERP TE 12.2, GU and UQ.

Collection Method

Field surveys using established monitoring protocols within transects and quadrats to measure vegetation structure and floristic composition.

Time Range

Primary field surveys: May 2008 to August 2009 for plantings/reference sites; October 2012 to June 2013 for regrowth sites.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-10 22:14:42.225168; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Wet tropics uplands of the south-central Atherton Tableland, north-eastern Australia (17°10´ – 17°35´S, 145°30´ – 145°45´E).