A preliminary study of plant succession on harvested sites in the Otway Ranges: Wye road regeneration area.  S. G. Harris.  March 1986.  29pp. (unpubl.)

SUMMARY

Species and frequency of all vascular plants were studied in May 1983 following timber harvesting in an area of mountain forest in the Otway Ranges, south-western Victoria. The area had a history of selective logging before it was intensively harvested for sawlogs and pulpwood from 1968 to 1979.

Four sites in the Wye Road Regeneration Area were selected for the study in May 1983. Three of the sites represented 4, 7 and 13-year-old logging regrowth, with the fourth site being in 1939 fire regrowth. Fifty quadrats on a 25 m x 25 m grid were intensively sampled on each of the logged sites, and 40 quadrats were used in the fire regrowth.

Herbaceous colonisers were abundant in young regenerating stands, but most had disappeared by age seven years. Species diversity declined in older stands as thickets of shrub and eucalypt regrowth overtopped and shaded fireweeds and low herbs. Wet sclerophyll shrub species were reasonably represented. Ferns were slow to return to the harvested sites. Introduced plants were a minor component of the regeneration and did not persist with time. Log landings and snig tracks were slow to revegetate.