Ecosystems and Vegetation

Ecosystems in Victoria are recognised by the vegetation they support.  There may be characteristic animal species and physical attributes of the landscape but it is the structure of the plant life forms and how they grow together that are the things people recognise and have given rise to ecosystem nomenclature and description.  Terms like forest, woodland, heathland, grassland and marsh predate the systematic nomenclature for plant and animal species and whatever classification is erected for ecosystem names, these words almost invariably find their way into the framework.  One problem with this is that the names were never precise, never unambiguously defined, often overlapped, and varied in their meaning from place to place.  So using them in a formal nomenclature has its difficulties.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) has made a substantial attempt to create such a formalised nomenclature for Victorian ecosystems and has used floristic survey data as the baseline for its classification.  This baseline, which began with floristic units called communities (a term which has legislative significance in the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act - FFG), has been amalgamated into broader units called Ecological Vegetation Classes (EVCs) that are further adjusted using structural, floristic and geographic characters.  Most of these units have been mapped and are available on the DSE website.

This page takes a step back from the detailed and formalised classification to provide some background information on the major ecosystems in Victoria that can be recognised by the non-professional.  The terms used here are, for the most part, not those of the EVCs but arise from common usage, some of which have been superseded by new and more complex names.  Nevertheless there is a consistency with the EVC classification in that most ecosystem groups can be represented by several EVCs and there are few EVC definitions that cross the boundaries between any of these ecosystems.