SERIC

SERIC Assists Search for Rare Endemic Orchid

In late 2000 the highly regarded field botanist, Kath Alcock, discovered a single population of a new species of rare orchid likely to be endemic to South Australia. The Population was located in degraded bushland within an urban reserve in the Naracoorte Township and has only been seen once since.

Concern for the endemic Orchid increased when Department of Environment and Heritage staff recognised the threat of urban development and level of weed invasion at this and other areas of similar habitat in the region. The Department commissioned a project to locate any other remaining populations of this species and begin habitat remediation works as soon as possible.

But where does one begin looking for such a rare plant in such a large area? By calling on the South East Resource Information Centre to use their electronic mapping expertise to narrow down the search area.

SERIC began the challenge by sourcing a variety of electronic datasets from a wide selection of sources including DEH, DWLBC, Bureau of Meteorology, and PIRSA.

Once these data were collated into the Geographical Information System, SERIC performed a spatial analysis of the one known location of the orchid to identify the optimum physical environmental conditions at that site. SERIC was able to isolate a variety of key parameters relating to soil type, vegetation cover, elevation, rainfall, and underlying geology.

These key parameters where then extrapolated across the region using a spatial query to highlight areas with identical physical characteristics. From this a map was created indicative of potential habitats across the South East region.

Anna Murphy, DEH project officer states "SERIC has done a marvellous job of modelling likely habitat areas across the South East region, allowing us to better focus our search efforts for further examples of the species. This has saved considerable time which we have been able to beneficially deploy in other aspects of the study"

SERIC GIS Specialist Daren Schunke and DEH project officer Anna Murphy discuss the results of SERIC's spatial analysis to locate potential orchid sites.