Aerial photo of Dingo Creek, East Errinundra

Geographic Information System of East Gippsland's forest

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Forests

Aerial photo of Dingo Creek, East Errinundra
By Tony Hastings 28/3/03

Looking south-west from over coupe 6. Clearfell is Coupe 843/501/10

In the foreground of the aerial photo is "coupe 843/501/08", which has rainforest and mixed forest inside its boundary. The bluish trees front center are Silver Wattles, which combined with the hollow-bearing old-growth trees make this prime Glider habitat. Along the wet gully lines are 400+ year old trees, with a 120 year old rainforest understorey.
On the top right of the picture you can see the young, brighter green re-growth from 1995's destruction. The grey lines are felled old-growth giants left as waste in wind-rows amongst the regen.
At the rear, right of the photo the edge of the sunshine coincidently follows the Errinundra National Park boundary, while the shadow casts onto the scheduled coupes.
The clearfell (light colour, centre of picture) was "Coupe 843/501/10", of which 30 of 50ha has been cleared. You can see the rainforest trees along the boundary, at left of the clearell. The remaining 20 hectares scheduled to be logged, are the shadowed patch between the clearfell and the National Park boundary.

Aerial photo by the Department of Conservation and Lands, 1979.

Key to aerial photo intepretation:

Fire regenerated forest
Forest regenerated from the 1932 bushfire. Small, densely packed crowns are evident.

Forest giants with crowns over 50m wide.

Cool Temperate Rainforest, dominated by Sassafras.

Silver Wattles are the lighter coloured trees.

Map by DNRE
"Old-growth" map by the DNRE.

It is from photos like this that most intepretative mapping work is done. Different tree species can identified by the colour and shape of the crowns. Different levels of disturbance can be detrmined by the size and density of the crowns.
This map was drawn by the Department of Natural Resources and Environment, based on aerial photo interpretation. Curiosly the browner areas supposedly show areas of less disturbance, but do not correspond with the areas shown in the photo to have the bigger, less dense stands, which are actually undisturbed old-growth.
Their map also fails to show the rainforest or Mixed Forest, clearly visible in the aerial photo. Mixed forest can be seen where the rainforest continues unbroken to the edge of the eucalypts. As Mixed Forest occurs beneath the eucalypt canopy, walking through the forest is the only way to then determine where the edge is. In this case, it extends as far as 150m in some places - well into the proposed coupes.

For more information on aerial photographic mapping echniques, see "A Study of the Old-growth Forests of East Gippsland", Woodgate et al, CNR 1994, or see the State Forest Resource Inventory (SFRI) for each Forest Management Area in Victoria. Contact Ross Kenny on 9637 8000.

Dingo Creek - illegal logging	The Court case	The Big Mama tree	Rainforest ecotones	Greg's tree	Mixed Forest
Photo gallery	Aerial photos	Before and after logging	Forest giants	Rainforest logging	The Tuft-tailed Phascogale
Logging schedule	Tour Dingo Creek	Logging schedule	The Quest for the Tuft-tailed Phascogale