Multi-aged mountain ash forest, wildlife conservation and timber harvesting

Abstract

Development of multi-aged stands of mountain ash trees (Eucalyptus regnans) in south-eastern Australia was examined with a spatial model of disturbance by fire. Stands were represented as spatially-explicit aggregations of cells that were exposed to spatially-correlated disturbance. The model predicted that approximately 10% of 3-ha sites would have trees both older than 200 yr and younger than 100 yr. At the scale of areas cut during timber harvesting operations (40 ha), the model predicted that 22% of sites would be multi-aged. As the size of cells became smaller, the scale of the analysis became finer grained and the frequency of development of multi-aged forest tended to increase to an a..