Location
The Victorian Dry Eucalypt SuperSite is actually a regional SuperSite hub consisting of several nodes. This new regional SuperSite’s vision is to provide the scientific infrastructure and institutional collaboration required for world-class science and sustainable management of terrestrial ecosystems in South Eastern Australia based on a sound understanding of their structure, composition, functions and processes.
There are two core nodes, located at Whroo in north-east Victoria (near Shepparton) and Wombat State Forest (near Ballarat), and a series of 3-4 high quality satellite sites that will provide the basis for scaling measurements from point to landscape to catchment. This new regional SuperSite builds on existing infrastructure, long term study sites, biodiversity and other monitoring sites. It includes investment in new observation platforms in key locations, extending across a range of land covers and uses. Both nodes host flux towers as part of TERN's OzFlux network and PhenoCameras collecting data for TERN's AusCover facility with live flux tower data and PhenoCam images available online from Whroo and Wombat Forest.
The Wombat State Forest Flux Tower site, managed by the University of Melbourne, not only monitors ecosystem fluxes of energy, water and carbon dioxide above-ground, with a flux tower, but also below-ground. The below-ground measurements are obtained using an automated chamber system that is connected to a Fourier Transformed Infrared Spectrometer in a mobile laboratory on site.
Research questions:
- What are the elements of structure, composition, functions and processes of the dry eucalypt forests of South Eastern Australia required for the sustainable management of these ecosystems?
- What is the carbon sink/source strength of a dry sclerophyll forest and what is their contribution to Australia's National Carbon Inventory?
- What is the magnitude of emission and/or uptake of non-CO2 greenhouse gases, such as nitrous oxide and methane of dry eucalypt forest?
- How will climate variability, drought or fire influence the ecosystem processes of dry eucalypt forest?