Tasmanian alpine biogeography and ecology and interpretation of the past

Introduction Almost all palaeoecological and paleoenvironmental research ultimately depends on an understanding of contemporary forms relationships and processes. Interpretations of direct and indirect evidence of the environment, vegetation and flora of the past are best consistent with our knowledge of ecological, climatological, geomorphological and evolutionary processes that can be observed in the present, not least because these processes provide the major means of testing hypotheses about the past. In this paper I undertake a numerical analysis of the macroenvironmental determinants of variation in the floristics, structure and dominance of Tasmania alpine and treeless subalpine vegetation, and use these results and other contemporary data to test hypotheses on the Quaternary history of the Tasmania alpine flora and vegetation.