Indian Ocean Drive Biodiversity Assessment
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Indian Ocean Drive Biodiversity Assessment - Flora and Vegetation Consolidation of existing fine-scale vegetation maps and site based data to assess the biodiversity values in the Dandaragan and Gingin Shires. March 2014 Cover photo: Judith Harvey Copyright: © Department of Parks and Wildlife* 2014 Report compiled by: Judith Harvey, Ben Bayliss, Van Leeuwen, S., Department of Parks and Wildlife, Perth, AU. Citation: Harvey, .JM, Bayliss, B., Van Leeuwen, S. 2014, Indian Ocean Drive Map Project: Consolidation of existing fine-scale vegetation maps and site based vegetation data to assess the biodiversity values in the Shires of Dandaragan and Gingin. Department of Parks and Wildlife,(Science Division), Perth, AU. This report was prepared for the Local Biodiversity Program, Western Australian Local Government Association (WALGA) and supported by the State NRM Program 2012-2014 * The Department of Parks and Wildlife (DPaW) was previously the Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) before 30 June 2013 Indian Ocean Drive Biodiversity Assessment (Flora and Vegetation) Dandaragan and Gingin Shires TABLE OF CONTENTS Summary ................................................................................................................................................. 5 Background ............................................................................................................................................. 8 1.1. PURPOSE .................................................................................................................................................. 8 1.2. STUDY AREA .............................................................................................................................................. 8 1.2.1. GEOMORPHOLOGY ................................................................................................................................. 9 1.2.2. REGIONAL VEGETATION ........................................................................................................................ 10 1.3. COMPARABILITY OF VEGETATION MAPPING .................................................................................................. 11 1.4. MAPPING SCALE ...................................................................................................................................... 12 2. Project Approach .......................................................................................................................... 14 2.1. DATA SEARCH ......................................................................................................................................... 17 2.2. SCOPING INFORMATION SOURCES................................................................................................................ 18 2.3. PROCESSING SPATIAL DATA: CREATION OF THE SPATIAL EXTENT OVERVIEW LAYER (MAP ‘FOOTPRINTS’): .................... 20 2.4. PROCESSING VEGETATION ATTRIBUTE DATA (DESCRIPTIONS) – THE NATIONAL VEGETATION INFORMATION SYSTEM (NVIS) 20 2.5. PROJECT OUTPUT ..................................................................................................................................... 22 3. Findings ......................................................................................................................................... 23 3.1. DATA COVERAGE AND CHARACTERISTICS ....................................................................................................... 23 3.2. SPATIAL (MAP) COVERAGE GAPS AND DATA VARIABILITY. .................................................................................. 30 3.3. SITE DATA IN RELATION TO MAP UNIT INTERPRETATION. ................................................................................... 31 3.4. SUMMARY OF SOURCE REPORTS WITH VEGETATION INFORMATION INTERPRETED AS MAPPED UNITS .......................... 31 3.5. SUMMARY OF REPORTS DOCUMENTING SITE BASED VEGETATION SURVEYS WITHOUT INTERPRETED MAP UNITS. ........... 41 3.6. COMPARISON WITH BEARD’S MAPPING ........................................................................................................ 43 4. Significant vegetation and flora of the study area ........................................................................ 44 4.1. VEGETATION ........................................................................................................................................... 44 4.2. THREATENED ECOLOGICAL COMMUNITIES ..................................................................................................... 46 4.3. FLORA .................................................................................................................................................... 47 4.4. RARE AND THREATENED PLANTS .................................................................................................................. 47 4.5. WETLANDS ............................................................................................................................................. 52 4.6. THREATENED AND PRIORITY FAUNA AND HABITAT ........................................................................................... 56 5. Investigation area east of Jurien. .................................................................................................. 59 6. Information Gaps and Guidelines ................................................................................................. 64 6.1. SPATIAL DATA GAPS ................................................................................................................................. 64 6.2. GAPS IN RESERVES .................................................................................................................................... 65 6.3. SURVEY GUIDELINES ................................................................................................................................. 66 6.4. DATA COLLATION ..................................................................................................................................... 67 7. Recommendations ........................................................................................................................ 68 8. Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................... 69 References ............................................................................................................................................ 70 Appendices ............................................................................................................................................ 75 2 Indian Ocean Drive Biodiversity Assessment (Flora and Vegetation) Dandaragan and Gingin Shires TABLES Table 1 Regional Vegetation Types and Bread Vegetation associations present in the Core Study area ................................ 11 Table 2 A general summary of the orders of vegetation mapping scale in relation to the extent of interpretative applications (Brocklehurst et al., 2007) ................................................................................................................................... 13 Table 3 Summary of the scale of spatial resource data in relation to various kinds of assessment applications .................... 13 Table 4: The NVIS Information Hierarchy with levels recommended for data compilation. ................................................... 21 Table 5 Summary of information source scale range. ............................................................................................................. 23 Table 6: Sources of survey information interpreted as mapped vegetation units and according to sites only. ...................... 25 Table 7: Area mapped within core study area by listed reference sources. ............................................................................ 27 Table 8 Mapped area statistics relative to the core study area. ............................................................................................. 28 Table 9 Mapped area statistics relative to remnant vegetation extent. .................................................................................. 28 Table 10 Recommended Protection of Wetlands on the Turquoise Coast Development Site* .............................................. 39 Table 11 Vegetation and status of Threatened Ecological Communities associated with the IOD study area. ....................... 46 Table 12 Rare and threatened plants mentioned in source survey reports. ........................................................................... 48 Table 13 Threatened fauna species summarised for the core study area. From records extracted from the DPaW Threatened Fauna Database. See Appendix 6, Conservation Codes definitions for Flora and Fauna ..................................... 57 Table 14 Area statistics for land parcel lots and proportion of remnant vegetation cover (as calculated from the DEC version of the AGFWA remnant vegetation layer used for the annual CAR reserve process. April 2012) ............................... 60 Table 15 Soil landscape sub systems for Lots 1, 500, 10600 and 10601 .................................................................................. 61 Table 16 Semenuik’s descriptions of seven sites in the Mimegarra wetland suite .................................................................. 62 Table 17 Approximate vegetation cover (%) of investigation area lots east of Jurien ............................................................