The Legacy of Mid-Holocene Fire on a Tasmanian Montane Landscape
Journal of Biogeography (J. Biogeogr.) (2014) 41, 476–488 ORIGINAL The legacy of mid-Holocene fire ARTICLE on a Tasmanian montane landscape Michael-Shawn Fletcher1,2,3*, Brent B. Wolfe4, Cathy Whitlock5, David P. Pompeani6, Hendrik Heijnis7, Simon G. Haberle2, Patricia S. Gadd7 and David M. J. S. Bowman8 1Department of Resource Management and ABSTRACT Geography, University of Melbourne, Aim To assess the long-term impacts of landscape fire on a mosaic of pyro- Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia, 2Archaeology phobic and pyrogenic woody montane vegetation. and Natural History, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, Location South-west Tasmania, Australia. Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia, 3Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, University of Chile, Methods We undertook a high-resolution multiproxy palaeoecological analysis Santiago, Chile, 4Department of Geography of sediments deposited in Lake Osborne (Hartz Mountains National Park, and Environmental Studies, Wilfrid Laurier southern Tasmania), employing analyses of pollen, macroscopic and micro- University, Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5, Canada, scopic charcoal, organic and inorganic geochemistry and magnetic susceptibility. 5Institute on Ecosystems, Montana State Results Sequential fires within the study catchment over the past 6500 years University, Bozeman, MT 59715, USA, have resulted in the reduction of pyrophobic rain forest taxa and the establish- 6Department of Geology and Planetary ment of pyrogenic Eucalyptus-dominated vegetation. The vegetation change Science, University
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