Swanlea carbon budget

The carbon estimates outlined below were taken from “Swanlea”, a cattle property located at the southern point of Lake Gallilee, east of Aramac. The property has a total area of 8143 hectares, of which about 1178 hectares (14%) has been cleared for grazing and established with improved pasture. The remaining 6,965 hectares (86%) is uncleared and classified as remnant vegetation by the Department of Natural Resources and Mines. As the property included such a wide range of Regional Ecosystems (REs) it was decided to sample only three of the REs, (marked in bold in Table 1) and to apply the measurements from these sites to the other REs. In addition, estimates were used from ecosystems sampled at “The Lake”, a nearby property in the Desert Uplands. At each RE one general area (site) was selected to be representative of the vegetation. Trees were measured in 200m² rectangular plots called transects. 30 transects were laid out at each site. Each transect was 50 metres long and 4 metres wide, and all were laid in a north-south direction. All trees were measured in the first three transects. Dead trees, if encountered were included in the measurements. In the remaining transects, trees were measured until thirty trees of each major tree type had been measured and then, only the number of trees was counted in each transect. All trees and bushes over 1.8 metres were measured. It was assumed that trees and bushes lower than this height would be susceptible to fire and may have perished in the landscape.The stem circumference of each tree selected was measured at a height of 30 cm above the ground. From this measurement, the tree biomass was calculated using previously developed equations, which relate stem circumference, or in some cases, stem diameter, to total above-ground biomass.