Ecological Communities - A Biological Survey of the Yellabinna Region

• Summary
• Full Report

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Summary

The Field Survey

Early morning mist in the Yellabinna dunes (Photo: Tony Robinson)

A camel trek into inaccessible areas of the dune field was part of the survey (Photo: Tony Robinson)

A new plant species subsequently named Lechenaultia aphylla was collected on the survey (Photo: Peter Canty)

Three new populations of the endangered Sandhill Dunnart were found (Photo: Steve Doyle)

A three-week survey of the vegetation and vertebrate fauna of the Yellabinna region, in the south-eastern Great Victoria Desert, was undertaken in October 1987. The area is a field of regular mallee-covered parallel dunes and tracts of salt lakes. Low outcrops of granite or volcanics form inselbergs or tors through the dune fields while a major outcrop of Sandstone at Mt Finke provides a distinctively different and isolated habitat from the surrounding dune fields.

Survey Results

The survey resulted in the recognition of:
23 plant communities with 686 plant species (51 introduced) - including eight mallee eucalypt, five chenopod and three acacia communities.

Five communities of small ground mammals with 35 mammal species recorded overall (six introduced).

Three bird communities with 121 species (three introduced).

Four reptile communities with 78 species (plus one frog).

The geographic distribution of most of these communities demonstrates the relative uniformity of the sand dune and swale system of this portion of the Great Victoria Desert. However, within this relative uniformity a gradient of increasing aridity from southeast to northwest is evident.

The survey has also recognised many significant species and sites within Yellabinna, which add considerably to the region's interest and our understanding of its conservation importance. Some of these species are rare or endemic to the region, but it is the common and widespread species, which provide the foundation for the region's overall conservation significance. Yellabinna is a vast area. It has biological integrity throughout and relative integrity with surrounding regions. As such Yellabinna provides the major link: or biological corridor connecting mallee areas in western and eastern Australia. It also links acacia shrublands and woodlands to the north, east and west. It is also a key conservation region because its large area and biological integrity support self-sustaining ecosystems and safeguard the genetic diversity upon which their continuing evolution depends.

Yellabinna is therefore an important region for the maintenance of biodiversity in its strictest sense; firstly for its maintenance of ecological processes, secondly for its maintenance of (native) species diversity and thirdly for its (potential) maintenance of genetic variability both within and between populations of each species.

Vegetation Mapping

Vegetation has been mapped over the area surrounding each of the survey sites at a scale of 1:100,000 for the first time.

These vegetation maps are the first steps of an ongoing program to ultimately produce vegetation maps at three regional scales to cover the whole State.

Reference: Copley, P. B. and Kemper, C. M. (eds.) (1992). A Biological Survey of the Yellabinna Region, South Australia in October 1987. South Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service and South Australian Museum, Adelaide.

Full Report

A full report of 'A Biological Survey of the Yellabinna Region, South Australia' is available as Acrobat PDF files.

Part 1 - Contents, Acknowledgements, Introduction and Methods (4Mb PDF)
Part 2 - Results (3.5Mb PDF)
Part 3 - Conclusions and Conservation and Recommendations (1.1Mb PDF)
Part 4 - Appendices (4.9Mb PDF)

Please note that some of the above files are very large and may take a while to download and to search these files you will need to open the "Bookmarks tag" within each file. If you have any problems please contact Robert Brandle or phone (61 8) 8222 9471.