Response of directly seeded high-value timber species to microorganisms, fertiliser and a water retention polymer: Implications for reforestation of agricultural lands in Southeast Asia

After its first election win in August 2001 since the Northern Territory of Australia (NT) was granted self-government (1978), the incoming NT Labor government released a new tourism plan, the Northern Territory Tourism Strategic Plan—2003–2007 in the following year. Turbulent events of 2001 that had a significant impact on the tourism industry in the NT and included the collapse of the Australian carrier Ansett Airlines and "September 11" provided the impetus for the new strategy. Purportedly, this plan was designed to direct and guide the NT tourism industry's future development based on sound research and extensive consultation with key stakeholders. Such a partnership approach was regarded as crucial for the success of future tourism in the Territory. This article specifically focuses on the formulation process of this Tourism Strategic Plan, exploring in particular the effectiveness of the underlying consultation process. Adopting a microperspective on tourism planning processes with the NT case example we portray a unique case that allows us to highlight not only the complex and dynamic nature of tourism planning during times of significant change in the Territory's political landscape, but also the often-experienced contradictions between tourism planning rhetoric and practice. Even though we explore a planning process that dates back about a decade, we believe that the findings of the study are relevant and inform current tourism policy and planning discourses

Phenology of urban trees in a tropical urban forest in Thailand

Urban forests are important for ameliorating urban heat loads and the urban microclimate may have an impact on tree phenology. Understanding these interactions is important to urban planners to select suitable trees for the urban forest. For one year we tracked leaf cover, flowers and fruit of 22 tree species in Bang Kachao Peninsula and explored correlations between phenology and climatic factors. Tropical lowland trees, with exception of mangroves, had reduced leaf cover in the dry season. Mangroves flowered and fruited throughout the year as compared to 1-3 times a year for tropical lowland forests. Positive correlations were found between flowering of Diospyros decandra with temperature; flowering of Aglaia cucullata and Elaeocarpus hygrophilus with rainfall; and fruiting of Dillenia indica and Diospyros malabarica with rainfall and relative humidity. We intend to apply tree phenology results to urban forest restoration and to monitor any adaptation to climate change for future mitigation strategies in tropical urban forests in Thailand

Ecological Structure of a Tropical Urban Forest in the Bang Kachao Peninsula, Bangkok

Rapid urbanization has changed the structure and function of natural ecosystems, especially floodplain ecosystems in SE Asia. The ecological structure of vegetation stands and the usefulness of satellite images was investigated to characterize a disturbed tropical urban forest located in the Chao Phraya River lower floodplain, Thailand. Nine sample plots were established on the Bang Kachao Peninsula (BKP) within 4 tropical forest types in an urban area: rehabilitation forest, home-garden agroforestry, mangrove and park. The tree habitats were beach forest, swamp forest, moist evergreen forest, dry evergreen forest, mangrove forest and abandoned orchard or home-garden. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) values obtained from Landsat 7 satellite images were correlated with plant structure from field surveys. NDVI had the highest relationship with stand factors for number of families, number of species, Shannon-Weiner index and total basal area. Linear regression predicted well the correlation between NDVI and stand factors for families and basal area. NDVI trends reflected urban tropical forest typing and biodiversity, being high in rehabilitation and mangrove forests, moderate in home-gardens and low in parks. We suggest that the application of NDVI for assessments can be useful for future planning, monitoring and management of the BKP and hence may contribute for increasing biodiversity and complexity of these urban forests