Conservation of plant diversity in native pastures on the North-West Slopes of New South Wales

Abstract

Vegetation surveys were used to assess how grazed native pastures conserve ground storey plant diversity compared with remnant Grassy Box Woodlands. Pastures had greater alpha diversity (species richness) than the woodlands, though the woodlands had much greater beta diversity across the study region. Despite higher diversity at the site scale, native pastures were homogenous in composition and did not conserve a large proportion of the regional ground storey species pool. The study highlighted the importance of observing plant diversity at multiple spatial scales.