Eastern Australian temperate forests

The Eastern Australian temperate forests, or the Eastern Australian temperate and subtropical forests, is a broad ecoregion of open forest on uplands (typically on the Great Dividing Range) starting from the east coast of New South Wales in the South Coast to southern Queensland, Australia. Although dry sclerophyll and wet sclerophyll eucalyptus forests predominate within this ecoregion, a number of distinguishable rainforest communities are present as well.

Many systematic National and State Parks are distributed throughout New South Wales and Queensland, although the representation of habitats varies throughout the ecoregion. In some areas, eucalyptus woodlands and dry forests have been cleared for urban development or to enhance grazing. Before Europeans first arrived to Australia, the Border Ranges had one of the largest rainforests in Australia.

Geography

This ecoregion covers an area between Australia's east coast and the Great Dividing Range, starting just above Eden, New South Wales in the South Coast, which includes (parts of) the Blue Mountains to the west Sydney, and ending in south Queensland's Border Ranges. The Sydney metropolitan area is transitional with regions such as the greater west (or the Cumberland Plain Woodland) being virtually excluded from this biome since it predominantly contains dry sclerophyll, grassy woodlands and thus the region's vegetation community will be more similar to Temperate grasslands (i.e. savannahs). Though pockets of forested areas in Sydney, such as those in The Hills Shire to the north and Sutherland Shire to the south, which are relatively wet, do have regions within them that are part of Eastern Australian temperate forests (such as the Sydney Turpentine-Ironbark Forest and Blue Gum High Forest).

Eucalyptus communities meandering the coast in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales are usually wet sclerophyll wet forests, ranging from 30 percent to 70 percent closed canopy cover, with the understorey containing small broadleaved trees, vines, ferns and shrubs.