Lyla Lindsey
Australia is home to a variety of ecosystems, including rainforests. In fact, there are 457 individual forest areas in the country, covering a total area of approximately 123 million hectares. Australia's rainforests are typically characterised by high rainfall, lush growth, and closed canopies. They rarely experience fire and are packed with spectacular waterfalls, idyllic swimming holes, breathtaking hiking trails, and much more. The three types of rainforests found in Australia are tropical, subtropical, and temperate rainforests.
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What You'll Learn
Tropical and subtropical rainforests
Tropical rainforests in Far North Queensland are rich in marsupial, frog, and butterfly species. The Daintree Rainforest, for example, is home to 663 species of animal, 230 butterfly species, and more than 2,800 plant species. The Daintree Rainforest is also the inspiration for the movie Avatar and is World Heritage-listed for its biodiversity.
Subtropical rainforests are generally found where the rainfall is more than 1,300 mm annually and grow in fertile eutrophic parent rocks (basalt and rich shales). They are likely to be found favouring sheltered gullies from sea level up to about 900 meters. Subtropical rainforests have a well-developed multi-layered canopy of between 10 and 60 species of trees, many of which exhibit the buttressing commonly associated with rainforest trees.
The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, contains the largest and most significant remaining stands of subtropical rainforest and cool temperate rainforests in the world. The Gondwana Rainforests also provide the principal habitat for many threatened species of plants and animals.
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Warm-temperate rainforests
The warm-temperate rainforests of Australia have ecological links to the North Island of New Zealand. They are closed forests with far less diversity than the dry or subtropical rainforests, growing on low-nutrient soils. They are typically found on poorer soils consisting of rocks such as rhyolite, trachyte, and slates in the Tweed Volcano region. They can also be found on more fertile eutrophic rocks in the southern cooler regions of the country.
The dry rainforests of Australia, in contrast, are usually found on fertile eutrophic rock soils, and they favour sheltered, warm areas with rainfall around 600 to 1100 mm per year, marked by a dry spell. Dry rainforests are distinguished by scattered emergent species such as Hoop Pine, Teak, and Lacebark trees in the upper canopy, and 10 to 30 species in the lower canopy. Buttressing and palms are uncommon or absent, and very large vines are common.
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Cool-temperate rainforests
The tree trunks in cool-temperate rainforests can be of massive size. Large vines and epiphytes are rare or absent, although thin wiry vines and a few small ferns and orchids may occur. Ground ferns and tree ferns are very common, and mossy epiphytes and lichens are the most abundant.
The cool-temperate rainforests of Tasmania support diverse fungi, mosses, and lichens. They are also home to iconic wildlife, such as koalas, platypuses, and southern right whales along the coast.
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Dry rainforests
Australia is home to a variety of rainforests, including dry rainforests, which are typically found on fertile eutrophic rock soils in sheltered warm areas with rainfall between 600mm and 1100mm per year, marked by a dry spell. Dry rainforests are distinguished by a less dense tree canopy, allowing more sunlight to reach the forest floor, which results in a drier forest floor.
Redwood Park in South East Queensland is a bird conservation paradise, home to rare birds such as the Black-Breasted Button Quails, Rufus Fantails, Spectacle Monarchs, and Powerful Owls. However, the park is under threat from mountain bike trails, homes dumping garden waste, and invasive weeds. Conservation efforts, such as the Save Redwood Park campaign, aim to protect these unique ecosystems.
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Monsoon rainforests
The Kimberley tropical monsoon rainforests of Western Australia are an example of this type of rainforest. They are severely disturbed by fires, introduced feral cattle, and weeds. The long-term genetic viability of these small scattered patches and populations requires effective conservation at the landscape scale.
The current monsoon rainforest mammal assemblage contains only one rainforest specialist mammal species (restricted to Cape York Peninsula) and is dominated by eutherian habitat generalists (murids and bats) that mostly occur in surrounding savanna habitats. The mammal assemblages in monsoon rainforests across northern Australia (Cape York Peninsula, Northern Territory, and the Kimberley) are regional subsets of the local savanna and mangrove mammal assemblages. Consequently, they share only a limited number of species, most of which are bats. The lack of rainforest specialists in northwestern Australia is believed to be due to the lack of large tracts of monsoon rainforest habitat, the possible substantial contraction of these habitats, and the limited extent of gallery rainforests.
The implications of these disturbance factors on the conservation and management practices of monsoon rainforest patches in the region are considered. Conservation of patches requires active fire and feral animal management.
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