Project BD1: Baselines, drivers and trends for species occupancy and distribution

The Natural Resources Commission oversaw the development of this project as a part of the Cross-tenure forest monitoring program.

Overview

The Forest Monitoring Steering Committee asked a team of scientists from universities, NSW government agencies and industry to study where plant and animal species live in NSW forests, how common they are, and what factors influence changes over time. This work focused on forests in the NSW Regional Forest Agreement regions where a significant area of NSW’s forests are found.

The scientists have now completed and delivered their final report.

Assessment outcome

This project is the largest and most important study of its kind in NSW forest management. The report sets a new standard for how data is collected, analysed and used. The methods and datasets created through this project form a major resource that improves our understanding of plants and animals in NSW forests.

The researchers built a large set of models to show baseline species occupancy and distribution, and to explore what drives changes over time. They produced:

• almost 450 fauna models, using data from more than 5,700 sites
• more than 170 flora models, using data from almost 5,250 sites.

This research provides:

• new spatial datasets that can be used as baselines for future comparison
• baseline information that identifies gaps in existing species data
• tools to explore how species occupancy changes due to fire, invasive species and other disturbances.

Key findings

Researchers found that there have been few large-scale, long-term monitoring programs since the early 1990s. This makes it hard to measure long‑term trends using data alone. Instead, species occupancy models give better information about how species are tracking over time.

The study found that climate change and fire are the biggest threats to biodiversity in eastern NSW forests. Managing fire in a way that protects biodiversity remains a major challenge. Climate forecasts suggest that the potential occupancy of 54 out of 78 threatened fauna species may decline by 2070, including species such as the Powerful Owl and the Greater Glider.

Species respond in different ways to changes in forest structure, climate and disturbance. For example, in the forests south of Eden, the Powerful Owl and Sooty Owl increased significantly between 1988 and 2011 after major disturbance events, whereas the Greater Glider declined over the same period and did not recover. This supports existing research showing that species that rely on tree hollows are especially sensitive to timber harvesting.

For plants, the study found that most species have not been greatly affected by native timber harvesting. However, many plant species were recorded too rarely to analyse in detail. Nine rainforest and wet sclerophyll species were identified as likely to be sensitive to harvesting.

The researchers recommended improvements to monitoring, including using a wider range of survey methods, adopting new technology, focusing on species most at risk from climate change and fire, and ensuring monitoring programs are well‑resourced and better coordinated.

Reports and data

The full results and analysis are available in the final report.

Project data and model outputs can be accessed through the TERN Data Discovery Portal and visualised through the Spatial Collaboration Portal.