The benefits of seed enrichment on sandalwood (Santalum spicatum) populations, after 17 years, in semi-arid Western Australia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Initially, the size-class structure of 1067 natural sandalwood (Santalum spicatum) trees and seedlings, growing in populations at three semi-arid sites (Burnerbinmah, Ninghan and Goongarrie) in Western Australia, was measured during 1996–97. These same populations, and any new sandalwood seedlings and small trees that had established after 1996–97, were measured again after 17 years (2013). Size-class structure was assessed by measuring over-bark stem diameter at 150 mm above the ground. Populations of sandalwood trees at the Burnerbinmah and Ninghan sites failed to regenerate and, after 17 years, they contained only 0–3% small trees and 0–2% seedlings. Their overall population size declined by 21–24% and, combined with recruitment failure, these natural stands of sandalwood may largely disappear within 50–60 years. At the Goongarrie site, the proportion of large trees within the natural population increased from 58% to 82%. The proportion of small trees was constant at 13–16%, while seedlings declined from 29% to 2%. The population reduced by 35%, mainly due to high seedling mortality. Although the population was in decline, there appeared to be enough small trees and seedlings to maintain the population longer than at both the Burnerbinmah and Ninghan sites. In a second study, 16 640 sandalwood seeds were sown at the same three sites during 1996–97, and then assessed for germination, survival, growth and fruit production over 17 years. Sandalwood germination and growth were compared between locations, fencing treatments and land systems. Seed enrichment was successful at each site with 27–45% germination and 6–20% survival (from germinated seeds) after 17 years. The overall seedling survival rates (from total seeds sown) ranged from 2.1% to 5.2%. Mean stem diameter of seedlings was significantly larger at Goongarrie (37 mm) than at both Burnerbinmah and Ninghan (20–22 mm) sites. Grazing significantly affected the performance of sandalwood seedlings at an age of 17 years at the Ninghan site. At this site, seedling survival (from germinated seeds) was 16% in the fenced plots compared with only 6% in the unfenced plots. Mean stem diameter in the fenced plots (24 mm) was also significantly greater than in the unfenced plots (11 mm). Land systems did not affect survival of sandalwood seedlings at the Burnerbinmah site but had a significant impact at the Goongarrie site after 17 years. Seedling survival was significantly greater on the hills and ridges than those growing on the plains with granite and red sand plains. Seed-enrichment programs are recommended to improve long-term regeneration and sustainability of sandalwood trees.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".