A changed landscape Traditional Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
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This road has an average speed of 40kmh, when getting to the GZ ensure you get the parking spots approx 50m from cache. There is a bit of room on the east side of road but only 1 space on the left. It is a few kms to do a u-turn.
When travelling through this area the signs of bushfire are everywhere. I think this is a great spot to stop and see the changes. The ground cover here before the fire was a grass called Joycea pallida. Due to the heat this grass is pretty well much gone was the area (the seeds where burnt). See Picture in Gallery.
It has been replaced with plants that have longer lasting seed that was stored more deeply in the soil. They normally grow in these locations for a short while, due to the lack of nutrients in the soil. The ash from the soil provides nutrients for growth but this will soon disappear and the grassy understorey will become dominant again. We dont know how long this will take, apart from the hot fire, recent rain has washed away huge amounts of top soil where the grass seeds would have been.
As you drive around doing this series of caches you will notice many responses to fire. In the wetter forest types that are also more nutrient rich, there has been huge amounts of regrowth. In drier areas like this with low nutrient levels there is much bare ground, but more flammable vegetation types. Because of the bare ground rain water is running off more quickly increasing flood risk down stream and increasing ersosion.
As you look around you will see mother nature respond to fire - a generally natural event, that we know so little about. We are barely gaining a knowledge of the how vegetation types indicate the fire regime for an area. Yet we are making management decisions that could well be making our problems worse and often these decisions are made in the emotion of a horrible event like February 7, 2009.
*****Dont forget the clue on the inside of the lid for multi cache "So Close".
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