Rainforests
Rainforests are often grouped broadly by climate including tropical, subtropical, dry, warm temperate, and cool temperate. They have dense canopies with overlapping branches and foliage. Only small amounts of light reach the forest floor. There is a range of plant life forms, including mosses, ferns, vines, palms, strangler figs and epiphytes.
Fraser Coast has multiple types of rainforest ecosystems.
Littoral rainforests are a highly fragmented and critically endangered habitat, which occurs at the interface between terrestrial and marine systems. This ecological community provides habitat for over 70 threatened plants and animals. Littoral rainforest and vine thickets can provide an important buffer against coastal erosion and wind damage.
In subtropical rainforests the vegetation is lush. The forest structure is a tall, closed forest, often with multiple canopy layers. It generally occupies sites below 300 m elevation and is found growing on nutrient-rich soils derived from alluvium and basalt and the required rainfall is generally over 1300 mm per year. This rainforest has high species diversity and many plant forms including tall trees, strangler figs, palms, epiphytes, and ferns.
Dry rainforests are noticeably less lush than subtropical, as they receive lower rainfall amounts. Dry rainforest usually has 2 tree layers, a diverse canopy, small leaves, large woody vines, and thorny or spiny shrubs. Trees such as bottle trees, hoop pine, and Crow’s ash often emerge above the dry rainforest canopy, and some tree species may lose their leaves for part of the year.