D.s Mendham

• The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation

Indonesian peatlands play a critical role in global carbon storage and biodiversity conservation, but they face significant ongoing threat of degradation and loss due to human-induced pressures, including the development of industrial plantations, agricultural expansion, extractive forestry practices, and recurrent fires. The imperative to restore...

Agroforestry is a ‘nature-based solution’ that provides a wide range of potential ecosystem services, including the provision of shade and shelter, and productivity impacts for crops, pastures and livestock. This report describes the geospatial implementation of ecosystem service models for shade, shelter and crop and pasture productivity across 10...

Using a weight of evidence approach, natural capital associated with regenerative grazing and silvopastoral systems were compared with those associated with conventional grazing systems. The aim of this review was to understand how grazing management influenced 16 natural capital indicators likely to be material from an economic and sustainability...

The pulp and paper industry in Sumatra, Indonesia, completely changed its key plantation forest species during 2012-2017 from their previous mainstay, Acacia mangium (which had become severely damaged by diseases) to Eucalyptus pellita and related hybrids. This rapid wholesale change posed major challenges to management and ongoing wood production....

Tropical peatlands in Indonesia have attracted international and domestic attention and concern in recent decades. Indonesian peatlands provide globally significant climate regulation and biodiversity provisioning ecosystem services and are central to the lives of local communities, yet they have undergone significant degradation via drainage and f...

Much of the peatland in Central Kalimantan is highly degraded because it has been cleared and drained over the last 30-40 years. Degraded peatland is highly susceptible to burning and oxidation and contributes 30-60 % of the annual greenhouse gas emissions of Indonesia. To combat these problems, the Government of Indonesia has made peatland restora...

In recent years, widespread peatland degradation has occurred in Indonesia as a result of both natural events and human activities. Although there is a strong push for restoration from national and international stakeholders, at the local level, farmers and communities are still widely managing peatlands with unsustainable practices including their...

Increasing tree planting on farms can provide a range of benefits. However, there are many barriers to increasing plantings on farms. To answer the research question of how natural capital accounting might be used to support farmers to increase trees on their farms, we spoke to 22 decision makers and stakeholders who are working to increase tree pl...

Acacia plantations are a significant forestry resource in Viet Nam, with the majority of the area under smallholder ownership, typically with 1–5 ha per household. Currently most acacias are grown in short rotations and sold for export as woodchips. Short rotation plantations suit smallholder farmers as they can receive a return relatively quickly...

The effect of Eucalyptus plantations on water balance is thought to be more severe than for commercial alternatives such as Pinus species. Although this perception is firmly entrenched, even in the scientific community, only four direct comparisons of the effect on the water balance of a Eucalyptus species and a commercial alternative have been pub...

Acacia auriculiformis represents an opportunity for farmers in Gunungkidul, Java, Indonesia, to grow trees for high quality sawlog products on shorter (6–8 year) cycles than traditional solid wood species such as teak that traditionally take 20–30 years. Farmers in Gunungkidul have grown acacias for several decades, but traditional management pract...

Agroforestry is one nature-based solution that holds significant potential for improving the sustainability and resilience of agricultural systems. Quantifying these benefits is challenging in agroforestry systems, largely due to landscape complexity and the diversity of management approaches. Digital tools designed for agroforestry typically focus...

Eucalyptus pellita can be regenerated through coppice. We report on the first known study of full-rotation productivity of E. pellita coppice and seedling re-establishment methods. We conducted this study at a high productivity site in South Sumatra, with the objectives to (1) evaluate the productivity of a first rotation of coppice stand in compar...

The effect of Eucalyptus plantations on water balance is thought to be more severe than for commercial alternatives such as Pinus species. Although this perception is firmly entrenched, even in the scientific community, only four direct comparisons of the effect on the water balance of a Eucalyptus species and a commercial alternative have been pub...

Wildfires in Indonesia are an annual phenomenon which peak in dry El Nino years, with up to 2.6 million ha of forest and land burnt in the drought year of 2015. This is an annual disaster for the country and surrounding region, with severe impacts on the environment, as well as human health, economic and social factors. Forest Management Units (FMU...

Environmental issues are becoming more urgent. Biodiversity loss, climate change, extreme events and global pressures on resources place increasing importance on decision making about how natural resources should be managed. Natural capital accounting (NCA) is gaining popularity as a systematic approach to recognise the full value of natural resour...

Shelterbelts are a popular form of agroforestry, providing a wide range of ecosystem services (e.g. wind speed reduction and wood production) which deliver farm-scale benefits. Variation in species composition and planting density drives structural differences in shelterbelts which directly influence the provision of ecosystem services and conseque...

Nutrient supplementation can stimulate growth of plantation trees through an increase in leaf area, but this link is dependent upon how the leaves are distributed throughout the crown. Due to its effect on the light environment through the crown, vertical leaf area distribution can have important impacts on leaf function with implications for tree...

Indonesia has the second-largest biodiversity of any country in the world. Deforestation and forest degradation have caused a range of environmental issues, including habitat degradation and loss of biodiversity, deterioration of water quality and quantity, air pollution, and increased greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. For...

Demand for forest products in Australia exceeds domestic capacity for local production and supply, resulting in a significant trade deficit in forest products of around AUD 2 billion per year. Domestic demand for forest products is forecast to continue increasing because such products are recognised as more sustainable than many alternative materia...

Peatlands support the daily needs of people in many villages in Indonesia, including in Central Kalimantan Province. They provide the natural resources to enable fisheries, agriculture, plantations, and forestry. However, peatland utilization comes with various challenges, including fire, soil acidity, inundation, low fertility, and limited choice...

Systematic and targeted location of trees on farms in a natural base solution that can help mitigate climate change. This can create an environment that mitigates climate change through capturing carbon and providing renewable feedstock for industrial and domestic fuel needs. To do this there needs to be a conscious effort to target certain species...

The retention of native woodland remnants in agricultural landscapes provides a range of benefits, many of which are linked to the ameliorative effects of trees on local microclimatic conditions. We monitored the reduction in wind speed and extreme temperatures that occurred in and around two native eucalypt woodland remnants in the Tasmanian Midla...

We report on a study of mid-rotation weed control and nutrient management in Eucalyptus pellita plantations in South Sumatra. The study was established at two contrasting sites (representing high and low productivity for the region) that had previously carried three rotations of Acacia mangium. A combination of weed control, nitrogen (N), and phosp...

The tropical peatland covers 44 million hectares or approximately 11 % of the total world's peatland. Twenty-one million hectares of it lies in Indonesia. Tropical peatland has important functions ecologically as carbon storage, hidrological control and habitat of flora, fauna and microbes. However, agricultural expansion that required drainage, co...

Tropical peatlands are fragile ecosystems with an important role in conserving biodiversity, water quality and availability, preventing floods, soil intrusion, erosion and sedimentation, and providing a livelihood for people. However, due to illegal logging, fire and conversion into other land use, the peatlands in Indonesia are under serious threa...

Restoration of degraded peatland has proven to be complex and many activities that have been initiated in recent years have not had a significant impacted on restoring peatland condition. Revitalization activities that have been carried out in several locations have not been effective. Likewise, rewetting actions were often poorly understood by the...

Community engagement and integrated research are key approaches to solving complex socio-ecological challenges. This paper describes the experience of bringing together a team of natural and social scientists from Australia and Indonesia in the ‘Gambut Kita’ (translated as ‘Our Peat’) project. Gambut Kita aims to produce new knowledge and support e...

Windbreaks modify microclimatic conditions within agricultural systems, however these affects are altered by temporal, environmental and spatial factors often resulting in variation in the reported agricultural benefits. Understanding the climatic conditions and times when windbreaks are most effective will increase our ability to predict impacts o...

A high demand for woodchips has encouraged smallholder farmers in Vietnam to invest in short-rotation Acacia plantations to produce pulpwood that has a relatively quick, though often low, income return. Because of an expanding export furniture industry, the Vietnam Government has sought to increase sawlog production and, at the same time, improve r...

Agroforestry systems provide smallholder farmers with opportunities to broaden their income base. However, as planting trees can come at the cost of reduced crop yield because of competition for resources, farmers need to understand the consequences of tree growing on crop productivity. This paper explores the impacts of Acacia auriculiformis on ag...

Since 1990, forest area in Vietnam has increased by around 15%, and now comprises more than 42%. The increase is mainly due to the establishment of short rotation Acacia plantations, which assist in the rehabilitation of under-utilised lands, and can be grown in short rotations by smallholder farmers for a range of uses. Presently, a high demand fo...

Burning harvest residues during site preparation can compromise the soil-nutrient stock in short-rotation plantations, but this practice remains common in northern Vietnam. This study compared the effect of two contrasting harvest-residue treatments (burning vs retention) on soil total carbon (TC), total nitrogen (TN), extractable P (ext-P), exchan...

Acacia auriculiformis plantations are widely planted in Vietnam. Initially they were grown for wood chip production, but these plantations have potential to be managed for higher value sawing and/or peeling grade logs, through enhanced silvicultural management. This study sought to understand the impact of resource constraints on responses of A. au...

Eucalyptus pellita has rapidly emerged as the species that has replaced Acacia mangium in broad-scale commercial plantations in Indonesia following widespread losses due to disease and in soils that have suffered a steady decline in phosphorus (P) under plantation forestry. Conversion from a nitrogen (N)-fixing to a non-N fixing species is expected...

Intensification of the dairy industry globally, combined with a changing climate, has placed increased pressure on natural capital assets (and the flow of ecosystem services) on farms. Agroforestry is widely promoted as an intervention to address these issues. While some benefits of integrating trees on farms, such as carbon sequestration and biodi...

More than 3 000 000 ha of tropical acacias have been established in recent decades, mostly grown on short rotations of 4–7 years, by a range of growers, from smallholders in Vietnam with less than 5 ha to large industrial growers in Sumatra managing hundreds of thousands of hectares. While the acacia estate is declining in some areas due to disease...

Agriculture faces increasing sustainability pressures. Land intensification and degradation, energy use and inputs, complexenvironmental management, social issues facing farming communities and climate change are just some of the headline sustain-ability concerns threatening the viability of farming. Simultaneously, there is a need to increase food...

Harvest residues can play a crucial role in conserving nutrients for recycling in forests, but little is known about the rates of decomposition and nutrient release from these residues following logging in tropical acacia plantations. In this study, we examined the biomass and nutrient content of harvest residue components (bark, leaves, and branch...

Agroforestry (the integration of trees into agricultural landscapes) has been promoted, in Australia and elsewhere, as a way to increase farm productivity by providing a wide range of benefits. Despite this, adoption of agroforestry in Australian agricultural systems remains low. To implement agroforestry, farmers must be convinced the benefits of...

In Sumatra and Kalimantan in Indonesia and Sabah in Malaysia, the spread of two diseases, aggravated by damage by fauna, and by the humid tropical environment, has forced a change of planted species from Acacia mangium to Eucalyptus pellita and related interspecific hybrids, at a scale unprecedented in the history of plantation forestry. This exper...

Indonesia’s pulp and paper industry needs a large area of sustainably grown plantations to support its continued development. Acacia mangium has been the key species underpinning the pulp and paper industries in Sumatra, however increased disease pressure on A. mangium is expected to require large-scale conversion of Acacia plantations to Eucalyptu...

Agroforestry (the integration of trees into agricultural landscapes) has been promoted, in Australia and elsewhere, as a way to increase farm productivity by providing a wide range of benefits. Despite this, adoption of agroforestry in Australian agricultural systems remains low. To implement agroforestry, farmers must be convinced the benefits of...

Tropical plantations are an important source of forest products both to meet the growing demand for wood, and to facilitate the transition from native forests to more sustainably produced forest resources. Management of these plantations for optimal productivity and resource-use efficiency is vitally important, and nutrient management is a critical...

Successful company-community partnerships are important for Indonesia’s aspirations to contribute to improving rural livelihoods through forestry. This study aimed to assess the livelihood impacts of a company-community forestry partnership that has now been operating for 20 years in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Using the sustainable livelihoods fra...

Young trees were harvested to explore non-destructive methodologies to estimate live branch dry weights in young fast-growing Eucalyptus species under different spacing and fertilizer treatments. Branch growth can vary with silvicultural management such as spacing, fertilizing and thinning, and over relatively short periods in response to environme...

In Indonesia, Acacia mangium plantations exceed 1.6 Mha contributing approximately 3.5% of the country’s GDP. The viability of these plantations is increasingly threatened by fungal pathogens, insect pests, squirrels, monkeys, elephants and wind damage. Studies indicate that the problem is growing and in some areas, fungal pathogens such as Ganoder...

Acacia hybrid plantations are widely planted for pulpwood in Vietnam, but have the potential to be managed for high value saw-logs. This study examined the growth and physiological responses to thinning as a management option to increase the sawlog yield and value. Treatments were: unthinned (planting density 1111 trees ha⁻¹), thinned to 833 or 600...

There is an increasing demand for rapid and cost effective techniques to accurately measure the effects of land use change on soil properties. This study evaluated the ability of mid-infrared spectroscopy (MIRS) coupled with partial least squares regression (PLSR) to rapidly predict soil properties affected by land use change from agriculture (main...

Phosphorus (P) is required to facilitate the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen (N) by leguminous species such as Acacia mangium. We studied the N fixation of A. mangium trees grown from two seed sources. These consisted of bulk seedlots collected from seed orchards in Sumatra, one based on natural provenances from the Cairns region, Queensland, Aust...

Accurate ground-based estimation of the carbon stored in terrestrial ecosystems is critical to quantifying the global carbon budget. Allometric models provide cost-effective methods for biomass prediction. But do such models vary with ecoregion or plant functional type? We compiled 15,054 measurements of individual tree or shrub biomass from across...

Selected tropical Acacia species are used extensively for short-rotation plantation forestry in many parts of Asia and, to a limited degree, in Australia. We explored leaf-level photosynthetic activity and leaf water potential (Ψleaf) of three field-grown Acacia tree species (aged between 7 and 18 months) in contrasting wet–dry tropical plantations...

This study reports the site variations in life cycle energy and carbon footprints of mallee biomass from nine sites in Western Australia based on the latest field data and additional fertilizer application to compensate for nutrients exported from the sites. Across the sites, the energy and carbon footprints of mallee biomass range from 299 to 451...

We studied the productivity of Acacia auriculiformis plantations in South Vietnam over three successive rotations covering 15 years. The focus of our study was on the effects of inter-rotation management on stand growth and soil properties. Contrastin g slash and litter management treatments were applied at the start of the sec ond rotation, and re...

There is an increasing interest in eucalypt reforestation for a range of purposes in Australia, including pulp-wood production, carbon mitigation and catchment water management. The impacts of this reforestation on soil water repellency have not been examined despite eucalypts often being associated with water repellency and water repellency having...

The use of biomass for energy is becoming increasingly popular, with many plantation forestry growers considering selling or using the biomass to generate renewable energy. It is known that this may lead to a net export of nutrients from the site, but the capacity of plantation sites to buffer this and sustain yield has not been quantified. In 2 lo...

Conservative site management practices such as harvest residue retention can potentially convey long term benefits for site sustainability, but they are only practiced to a limited extent in many Eucalyptus plantations in the tropical regions. Burning and/or removal of harvest residues can remove substantial quantities of nutrients, but it is still...

Leaf area is a key driver of growth models and leaf weight is important for studying carbon and nutrient cycling in forestry. Both can change over relatively short intervals in young plantations in response to silvicultural treatments and climatic conditions. Relationships to estimate leaf dry weight and leaf area of young Eucalyptus grandis W. Hil...

A selection of multi-stemmed, drought-tolerant mallee eucalypts, planted in belt form and integrated with crops in dryland agricultural areas of Australia, may be able to produce biomass as a commercially attractive feedstock for biofuel production. This study aimed to determine if small (40-50 cm high) bunds along mallee belts could trap otherwise...

In medium-low (250-850 mm year−1) rainfall regions of southern Australia, reforestation with mallee eucalypts is promoted for biomass production for carbon sequestration and/or bioenergy. Cost-effective estimation of biomass is essential for assessing the economic viability of plantings. To explore this, we collated biomass data from 198 stands in...

a b s t r a c t Forestry systems frequently utilise coppice regrowth to establish 2nd and later rotations, partly because early growth in coppice is often faster than in seedlings. This rapid regrowth is to some extent attribut-able to translocation of below-ground reserves to support the development of new shoots. Translocation of below-ground car...

a b s t r a c t Forestry systems frequently utilise coppice regrowth to establish 2nd and later rotations, partly because early growth in coppice is often faster than in seedlings. This rapid regrowth is to some extent attribut-able to translocation of below-ground reserves to support the development of new shoots. Translocation of below-ground car...

a b s t r a c t Forestry systems frequently utilise coppice regrowth to establish 2nd and later rotations, partly because early growth in coppice is often faster than in seedlings. This rapid regrowth is to some extent attribut-able to translocation of below-ground reserves to support the development of new shoots. Translocation of below-ground car...

The variation in the morphological and physico-chemical properties of soils of Acacia mangium plantations were studied in South Sumatra, Indonesia in order to understand how these might affect plantation productivity. Representative soils consisting of four high productivity sites (HPS) and fi ve low productivity sites (LPS) were selected. The main...

Overview: During the last two years, a major nationally-collaborative research program has been lead by CSIRO to improve the estimation of biomass accumulation by mixed-species environmental plantings and mallee eucalypt plantings. It has involved evaluation of the uncertainties associated with using alternative approaches to biomass estimation, an...

Early weed control may improve the growth of forest plantations by influencing soil water and nutrient availability. To understand eucalypt growth responses to weed control, we examined the temporal responses of leaf gas-exchange, leaf nitrogen concentration (N) and water status of 7-month-old Eucalyptus globulus L. trees in a paired-plot field tri...

Aims Growers of Eucalyptus globulus Labill. plantations can establish second and later rotations from coppice or by replanting with seedlings. At most locations where E. globulus is grown commercially, water availability is a major driver for productivity. Thus growers must consider which reestablishment technique will maximize productivity whilst...

Accurately and non-destructively quantifying the volume, mass or nutrient content of tree components is fundamental for assessing the impact of site, treatment, and climate on biomass, carbon sequestration, and nutrient uptake of a growing plantation. Typically, this has involved the application of allometric equations utilising diameter and height...

Free air CO2 enrichment (FACE) experiments are considered the most reliable approach for quantifying our expectations of forest ecosystem responses to changing atmospheric CO2 concentrations [CO2]. Because very few Australian tree species have been studied in this way, or are likely to be studied in the near future because of the high installation...

This paper reports on variation in leaf area index (L) in five Eucalyptus globulus Labill. plantations in response to application of nitrogen, thinning at age 2 years and variation in climate wetness index (the ratio of rainfall to potential evaporation). Observed L is compared with: (i) L predicted to optimize net primary productivity for a given...

Eucalyptus globulus plantations are thought to use stored soil water when planted on ex-agricultural sites, and we hypothesized that this is likely to affect productivity of 2nd and later rotation plantations because the next rotations have access to less stored soil water. We used a combination of experiments and modeling to understand the impact...

More than 2.5 million ha of Eucalyptus globulus are now planted across the globe including approximately 500 000 ha in southern Australia. In this region average annual rainfall has declined since 1960 and this trend is predicted to continue in the coming decades. E. globulus is a premium species for paper manufacture and grows well under moderate...

Low nitrogen (N) availability often results in reduced productivity of Eucalyptus plantations. We studied the response of four eucalyptus plantations (two plantations of E. tereticornis on the coastal lowlands, and two plantations of E. grandis in the upland region of the Western Ghats, Kerala, India) to N addition and related this response to seas...

Eucalyptus globulus Labill., a globally significant plantation species, is grown commercially in a multiple rotation framework. Second and subsequent crops of E. globulus may be established either by allowing the cut stumps to resprout (commonly referred to as coppice) or by replanting a new crop of seedlings. Currently, long-term growth data compa...

Land use change from agriculture to forestry offers potential opportunities for carbon (C) sequestration and thus partial mitigation of increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. The effects of land use change of grazed pastures on in situ fluxes of nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) from soil were examined across 3 forest type...

Eucalypt plantations in India are an important source of fiber for paper making and fuel for local villagers. Large areas of land have supported eucalypt plantations for several rotations, and productivity has generally been declining through successive rotations. In 1997, we initiated a project to examine site management options as a way to improv...

La predicción de rendimientos en la silvicultura comercial ha estado dominada hasta ahora por el empleo de técnicas de modelización empíricas. Sin embargo, los modelos basados en procesos se están utilizando cada vez más como suplementos o incluso sustitutos de los tradicionales. En este artículo apuntamos nuevas demandas forestales y la forma en q...

Sustaining productivity in short-rotation forest plantations over multiple rotations can be problematic, when nutrient inputs to soil are small compared to exports off-site during harvest. For example, there are concerns about sustained productivity of Eucalyptus globulus plantations growing on ex-pasture land in south-western Australia because nit...

Pools of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg) were examined in the soil and above-ground plant biomass at the end of a 7 year rotation at two E. tereticornis lowland sites and two E. grandis highland sites in Kerala, India. Potential export rates of these nutrients were also examined for different biomass rem...