Location
The Tropical Forest Research Centre is located in Atherton,
approximately one and a half hours drive from Cairns.
While Australia's tropical forests comprise only 0.1% of
the land mass, they provide a habitat for 25% of the plant
genera, 30% of the marsupials, 60% of the bats, 30% of the
frogs, 23% of the reptiles, 62% of the butterflies and 18%
of the birds.
Much of Far North Queensland's coastal rainforests have already
been cleared or severely disturbed by selective logging and
hunting and even the Atherton Tableland forests exist only
as fragments. The impact of this disturbance on rainforest
plants, animals and soils, and predicting response to further
disturbances, is an underlying theme of various research projects.
Located in a region where much of the rainforest has been
included in the World Heritage Listing, the TFRC provides
research aimed at increasing understanding of the various
complex relationships of the rainforest ecology, so that communities
and forest management agencies may make sound judgement decisions.
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| Situated close to the Wet Tropics World
Heritage Areas, Atherton provides an excellent site
for the TFRC. |
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| Connecting highways and nearby major
centres |
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