Plant Succession in an Irregularly Fired Grassland Area--Doma Peaks Region, Papua

Abstract

New Guinea is an island of extremely diverse vegetation types all of which are affected to some extent by an indigenous people who operate either a system of shifting agriculture or are nomadic in habit. In both cases they invariably leave a trail of fired vegetation in their wake. The purpose of this article is to present a quantitative assessment of the degree to which irregular firing affects the pattern of succession of some specific associations in a low montane grassland not subject to agricultural pressures. The assessment is based on detailed records taken from a representative location. No intensive data have been published about such areas in Papua, New Guinea. Ecological studies in a broad sense have been carried out in inhabited grassland areas by Havel (1960), Robbins (1960, 1961a, b), van Royen (1963) and Walker (1966). Although the study area was reasonably representative of the species complex of most of the locality, numerous minor associations occur in the grassland which are not mentioned in this paper. All or most of these associations are dominated to some extent by Cyperaceae or Gleichenia spp. The general region was the Doma Peaks in the southern Highlands of Papua close to the New Guinea border at lat. 5o55' S by long. 143?10' E (Fig. 1). The study area was at an altitude of 2590 m (8500 ft) in a grassland valley in Tari Gap a few miles south-east of Tari. Field observations were made during an expedition to the Doma Peaks in June 1966 with a botanical team from the Rijksherbarium, Leiden, Holland, and the Department of Forests of Papua and New Guinea.