BOOBOOK ECOLOGICAL CONSULTING
Flora surveys
Flora surveys
Safeguarding the biodiversity of our region requires us to understand and monitor the many species that coexist here.
Flora and vegetation surveys are fundamental to responsible land management. They help you assess an area’s conservation value, predict the impact of potential changes to land management and document an area’s biodiversity.
What is the difference between a flora survey and a vegetation survey?
Flora surveys are those conducted on one particular species of plant, whereas vegetation surveys describe an entire plant community.
Flora surveys are conducted for many reasons, like producing a list of species found in an area or collating data about a particular rare or threatened species.
Vegetation surveys allow us to define and map the vegetation types or regional ecosystems found in a particular area. We can also use these surveys to ground-truth existing vegetation maps or create maps where these do not yet exist.
At Boobook Ecological Consulting, we undertake flora and vegetation surveys to:
- Give you the confidence of knowing you have identified plant communities and ecosystems correctly prior to clearing
- Identify vegetation types to assist you with land management
- Identify the biodiversity offset potential of vegetation patches
- Outline and showcase the environmental significance and values of a property for environmental accreditation, property sale and product branding
- Help you meet permitting requirements (e.g. Environmental Authority (EA) conditions)
- Identify and map protected species, particularly in Protected Plant Flora Survey Trigger Areas
- Obtain baseline data for rehabilitation requirements and final project sign off
- Locate and map threatened species that have special management requirements
Our approach
At Boobook Ecological Consulting, we pride ourselves on our scientific integrity. It is important to us that we provide accurate advice which genuinely increases our clients’ knowledge of their environment.
That’s why we provide detailed maps – including both state government-identified regional ecosystems and threatened ecological communities identified under the federal EPBC Act – and often pair these with comprehensive vegetation reports.
Vegetation maps help us to visualise plant communities in an area, including the location of any threatened species. To create them, we examine aerial and satellite imagery, then conduct a field inspection to ground truth and refine vegetation boundaries.
Our plant survey and vegetation survey reports include:
- Desktop assessments (e.g. previous studies and database searches)
- On-ground survey results (including maps)
- Expert recommendations
You may also be interested in PMAVs.
Our experience
Our team of expert ecologists have conducted hundreds of flora and vegetation surveys requiring vegetation maps. These have included:
- Mapping threatened ecological communities (e.g. Brigalow) for coal seam gas infrastructure projects and biodiversity offsets
- Providing ground-truthed regional ecosystem maps for coal seam gas projects and farmers (scaled to the property or site)
- Creating vegetation maps for linear infrastructure projects including powerlines, pipelines and roads
We are specialists in southern inland Queensland flora
With over 60 years of combined field experience – much of that in the Brigalow Belt and Mulga Lands bioregions – there is scarcely a plant in this area that our ecologists do not know.
Our director and principal ecologist, Craig Eddie, is the author of the highly regarded book Field Guide to Trees and Shrubs of Eastern Queensland Oil and Gas Fields, and we have created our own plant collection (herbarium) containing thousands of dried plants which we use for reference and training purposes.
Our team has undertaken hundreds of flora surveys in locations ranging from small construction sites to entire properties and protected areas. We have also collected over 3,000 plant samples for the Queensland Herbarium’s reference collection, with several representing species that are new to science.
So much still to discover
We are excited to continually discover previously undocumented flora populations and feel privileged to share these discoveries with our clients and partners.
Some of our recent new location discoveries, made during threatened flora surveys, include:
- Ooline (Cadellia pentastylis)
- Darling daisy (Cymbonotus maidenii)
- Wardell’s wattle (Acacia wardellii)
- Red-soil woolly wrinklewort (Rutidosis lanata)
- Gurulmundi heath-myrtle (Micromyrtus carinata)
- Heath-myrtle (Sannantha brachypoda)
- Swamp tea-tree (Melaleuca irbyana)
- Broad-leaved bertya (Bertya opponens)
How we can help
Whether you need a record of all flora within a particular area or an appraisal of a particular rare species or targeted group, our team can help. We conduct flora and vegetation surveys of various scales, from individual properties to landscape-scale assessments.
Depending on your requirements, our surveys can involve:
- Conducting general searches
- Using plots and transects to measure species composition and abundance
- Undertaking surveys over multiple seasons.
Contact us to find out how we can help.
What our clients say
The science of a shared world
Boobook Ecological Consulting has built its success on decades of first-hand knowledge of the natural ecosystems of the southern Queensland drylands combined with practical understanding of the complex pressures that impinge on Australia’s fragile environment.