Australia’s forests and forestry glossary

The environment where a plant, animal or ecological community normally lives or occurs.

See Ecological community.

1. A tree (alive or dead) containing naturally occurring hollows or crevices, where animals can live, breed or shelter, and retained in a harvested area to provide habitat.

2. A tree with artificially created hollows to provide suitable nesting or shelter sites for endangered fauna.

Wood or wood products from flowering trees (broad-leaved tree species), such as eucalypts, irrespective of the physical hardness of the wood.

Also refers to trees that have such wood, and plantations of such trees.

See Softwood.

Wood products originating from harvested trees and removed from harvest areas for use as-is or after further processing.

See Harvesting.

1. As part of forest management, cutting (felling) of trees to produce wood products.

2. Collection (gathering) of non-wood forest products.

See Forest management, Non-wood forest product (NWFP).

A non-forest vegetation type found mainly on low-quality acidic soils and characterised by low-growing woody vegetation. It forms extensive and highly diverse communities across Australia. Heathland above 2 metres tall and containing a tree component can also be classified as ‘Sparse woody vegetation’.

See Shrubland, Sparse woody vegetation.

The vertical height from the ground to the top of a tree, or to the top of the overstorey layer of a forest. Three height classes are used for forest in Australia's National Forest Inventory: Low forest, Medium forest and Tall forest. 

See Growth stage, Overstorey. 

For plants, the process of crossing different breeds or cultivars of a single plant species, or crossing plants of different taxa (subspecies, species or genera). Hybridisation can occur naturally between closely related taxa.

See Taxon.