Ecosystem services provided by
the Central Highlands Forests evaluated
Key findings of the ecosystem accounts for the Central Highlands of Victoria
- The value of ecosystem services used in 2013-14 for agricultural production was $121m and the water provisioning service was $101m, which were an order of magnitude greater than the native timber provisioning service ($19m).
- The contribution to GDP (Industry Value Added value) of the agriculture ($312m), water supply ($310m) and tourism ($260m) industries were all more than twenty times higher than for the native forestry industry ($12m).
- The potential IVA of carbon sequestration was estimated at $49m, based on the recent national carbon price, which is higher than the IVA of native timber production ($12m). Access of native forests to the carbon market is currently excluded by government regulation.
- Ecosystem condition declined over time, with a decrease in areas of older forest. Notably, the total area of older montane ash forest and rainforest reduced by one third over a 25 year period.
- Biodiversity declined over time. This is indicated by the:
- increase in the number of threatened species from 28 in 2000 to 38 in 2015 and the severity of their threat category;
- decline in the number of arboreal marsupial animals;
- decline in condition of the habitat consisting of large, old, hollow-bearing trees within a complex forest structure.
- The key threatening process for arboreal marsupials is native forest logging, which results in the accelerated loss of existing hollow-bearing trees and the impaired recruitment of new cohorts of these trees. Areas impacted by wildfire lose 42 per cent of their hollow-bearing trees, while logged areas lose 70 per cent.
- Spatial distributions of ecosystem services across the region identified ‘hotspots’ where provisioning of native timber conflicts with maximising services of water provisioning and carbon storage.
