Zeitschriftenartikel zum Thema „Fragmented landscapes South Australia Lofty“

Agricultural landscapes in southern Australia were once dominated by temperate eucalypt woodlands of which only fragmented patches and scattered trees in paddocks remain. This study focuses on the decline of scattered trees in the Mount Lofty Ranges and South East agricultural regions of South Australia. A combination of digitized aerial photography and satellite imagery was used to extend a previous assessment of decline undertaken in the early 1980s and increase the period over which decline was assessed to 58–72 years. A total of 17 049 scattered trees were counted from the earliest time period assessed over 11 sites of which 6 185 trees were lost by 2008 — a 36 % decline. Recruitment of 2 179 trees during this period was evident. Imagery indicates that clearing for agricultural intensification is the primary cause of the decline. A range of management options and policy settings are required to reverse the decline notwithstanding the challenges of implementation at a landscape scale across privately owned land.

Conservation programs for threatened species are greatly benefiting from genetic data, for their power in providing knowledge of dispersal/gene flow across fragmented landscapes and for identifying populations of high conservation value. The endangered southern brown bandicoot (Isoodon obesulus obesulus) has a disjunct distribution range in South Australia, raising the possibility that populations of the subspecies may represent distinct conservation units. In the current study, we used a combination of 14 microsatellite and two mitochondrial sequence markers to investigate the phylogeography and population structure of I. o. obesulus in South Australia and south-western Victoria, with the aim of identifying any potential evolutionarily significant units and management units relevant to conservation management. Our phylogenetic/population analyses supported the presence of two distinct evolutionary lineages of I. o. obesulus. The first lineage comprised individuals from the Mount Lofty Ranges, Fleurieu Peninsula and Kangaroo Island. A second lineage comprised individuals from the south-east of South Australia and south-western Victoria. We propose that these two lineages represent distinct evolutionarily significant units and should be managed separately for conservation purposes. The findings also raise significant issues for the national conservation status of I. o. obesulus and suggest that the current subspecies classification needs further investigation.

Autecological data were collected on southern populations of the yellow-footed antechinus (Antechinus flavipes), during a wider study on the persistence of this species in a highly fragmented landscape of the southern Mt Lofty Ranges, South Australia. Data are presented to provide information on this species in the southern part of its range, to present a comparison with populations in other, more northern regions, and to provide an insight into the species' persistence in a fragmented system. Resulting recapture rates lend support to the presence of a male-biased dispersal strategy, which is the first published indication of such a strategy for the species. New information was also recorded for nest sites, with most sites occurring in tall Xanthorrhoea semiplana tateana, and only 33% found in tree cavities. Other results showed mostly comparable population densities and weights with other, more northern populations. However, differences were apparent with respect to juvenile dispersal behaviour and, to some extent, breeding times. Within-study populations also showed variation with regard to weights, density and breeding times. Forest animals were lighter, were largely of lower population densities, and were generally later breeders than animals that inhabited patches and strips of remnant vegetation. Such differences in weight and density may have been due to favourable 'edge effects' in patches and strips, while variations in breeding times may be due to local climatic or habitat factors. The life-history strategies and tolerance of habitat edges shown by A.�flavipes (presently and historically) provide some explanation for the species' persistence in this fragmented system.

A large-scale, long-term study of the impacts on vertebrates of landscape change and habitat fragmentation is taking place at Tumut in southern New South Wales, south-eastern Australia. Field surveys focus on counting birds within three broad kinds of sites in the study region. These are: (1) A randomized and replicated set of 85 sites in remnants or fragments of native Eucalyptus forest located within the boundaries of the Radiata Pine plantation. (2) Sites dominated by Radiata Pine plantation trees (N = 40 sites). (3) Sites in the large areas of continuous Eucalyptus forest adjacent to the plantation that act as “controls” (N = 40 sites). We list of birds recorded during 1996 and 1997. A total of 92 species from 34 families was recorded. The list will be useful for workers examining bird responses to fragmented landscapes as well as those interested in the biodiversity values of plantation landscapes.

Two large-scale, long-term biodiversity monitoring programs examining vertebrate responses to habitat fragmentation and landscape change in agricultural landscapes are taking place in the Murray Catchment Management Area of New South Wales, south-eastern Australia. Field surveys involve counting reptiles under a range of management conditions and across a broad range of vegetation types in two bioregions, the South-western Slopes of New South Wales and the Riverina. We list reptiles recorded during surveys conducted between 2002 and 2009. We include additional species recorded between 1997 and 2009 from a conservation reserve. Thirty-nine species from nine families were recorded. The list will be useful for workers interested in reptile zoogeographical distributions and habitat associations as well as those interested in the biodiversity value of remnant vegetation and tree plantings in fragmented agricultural landscapes.

This paper describes the South Australian distribution of the southern brown bandicoot (Isoodon obesulus obesulus) on the basis of records of its past occurrence and field surveys undertaken to determine its present distribution. Since European settlement I. o. obesulus has been recorded from four separate regions of the state: the Mount Lofty Ranges, the South East, Kangaroo Island and Eyre Peninsula. Subfossil remains show that I. o. obesulus also once occurred on Yorke Peninsula but there is no evidence that it has existed there in modem times. Field surveys conducted between 1986 and 1993 confirmed that I. o. obesulus still exists in the Mount Lofty Ranges, the South East and on Kangaroo Island. Its status on Eyre Peninsula is uncertain. Isoodon o. obesulus is vulnerable in the South East and Mount Lofty Ranges because of habitat fragmentation and predation by feral carnivores. The Kangaroo Island population is less threatened as large areas of habitat have been preserved and the fox (Vulpes vulpes) has not been introduced. The area of potential bandicoot habitat remaining in these three regions totals approximately 190 000 ha, most of which is already managed for nature conservation. This habitat is highly fragmented, occurring as small remnant patches of native vegetation separated by extensive tracts of cleared and modified land cover. The implications of this habitat configuration for the long-term survival of I. o. obesulus are discussed.

The received wisdom was and is that landscapes cannot be more than a few millions of years old. Nevertheless, consideration of local geology and age of sediments in adjacent basins convinced Paul S. Hossfeld that the summit surface of low relief preserved on the northern Mount Lofty Ranges of South Australia resulted from long-continued planation and that it is of Cretaceous age; that is, some 70 million years old. Hossfeld's apparently intuitive suggestion that very old landscapes exist, recorded in his graduate thesis but not further pursued by him, is the earliest known statement of this idea.

Many species of reptiles are sedentary and depend on ground-layer habitats, suggesting that they may be particularly vulnerable to landscape changes that result in isolation or degradation of native vegetation. We investigated patterns of reptile distribution and abundance in remnant woodland across the Victorian Riverina, south-eastern Australia, a bioregion highly modified (>90%) by clearing for agriculture. Reptiles were intensively surveyed by pitfall trapping and censuses at 60 sites, stratified to sample small (<30 ha) and large (>30 ha) remnants, and linear strips of roadside and streamside vegetation, across the regional environmental gradient. The recorded assemblage of 21 species was characterised by low abundance and patchy distribution of species. Reptiles were not recorded by either survey technique at 22% of sites and at a further 10% only a single individual was detected. More than half (53%) of all records were of two widespread, generalist skink species. Multivariate models showed that the distribution of reptiles is influenced by factors operating at several levels. The environmental gradient exerts a strong influence, with increasing species richness and numbers of individuals from east (moister, higher elevation) to west (drier, lower elevation). Differences existed between types of remnants, with roadside vegetation standing out as important; this probably reflects greater structural heterogeneity of ground and shrub strata than in remnants subject to grazing by stock. Although comparative historical data are lacking, we argue that there has been a region-wide decline in the status of reptiles in the Victorian Riverina involving: (1) overall population decline commensurate with loss of >90% of native vegetation; (2) disproportionate decline of grassy dry woodlands and their fauna (cf. floodplains); and (3) changes to populations and assemblages in surviving remnants due to effects of land-use on reptile habitats. Many species now occur as disjunct populations, vulnerable to changing land-use. The status of reptiles in rural Australia warrants greater attention than has been given to date. Effective conservation of this component of the biota requires better understanding of the population dynamics, habitat use and dispersal capacity of species; and a commitment to landscape restoration coupled with effective ecological monitoring.

Woodland birds are declining throughout the agricultural landscapes of south-eastern Australia, but the specific mechanisms driving these declines remain unclear. Reproductive failure via clutch depredation could conceivably contribute to these declines. Although site-scale habitat may influence the risk of clutch failure, larger-scale influences, such as whether a landscape contains a rural town or not (‘landscape type’), may also play a role. This study monitored artificial open-cup nests deployed in three pairs of the two landscape types and: 1) indexed clutch survival and predator assemblage; and 2) determined if clutch survival was influenced by landscape type and/or local habitat characteristics. High levels of clutch depredation were observed in both landscape types and for all landscapes, with no evidence to suggest that landscape type or habitat characteristics influenced clutch survival or the time-to-first-predator visit. Predator assemblage also was consistent between landscape types. Generalist avian predators were the most common egg predators. Such egg predators may be ubiquitous throughout the fragmented Box-Ironbark woodlands of south-eastern Australia.

A pedo-hydrological method which involves interpreting features in soils that result from both ancient and modern processes along toposequences in a subcatchment of the Mt Lofty Ranges, South Australia, is used to construct conceptual soil-water-landscape models. This method links soil-landscape features to soil-water processes with strong emphasis on: (i) soil water-flow systems and (ii) soil-forming and soil-change processes. The conceptual model illustrates the interactions between soil processes acting in soil water-flow systems. This model is able to predict future modes of soil-landscape evolution under changing environmental conditions. As well, it may be used by land and water supply managers to develop more efficient management strategies under conditions of increasing land degradation (e.g. erosion and water pollution). A typical Palexeralf-Natraqualf hydro-toposequence of soils (i.e. catena consisting of red-yellow-grey duplex soils) is used as an example to illustrate this new approach. The landscape selected is undergoing severe soil degradation (i.e. waterlogging, dryland salinity, erosion and water pollution). The constructed conceptual soil-water-landscape model is the result of detailed pedo-hydrological investigations along toposequences in a representative subcatchment in the high rainfall zone (>600 mm) of the Mount Lofty Ranges, South Australia. The model illustrates in graphic form interactions between three soil water-flow systems (freely drained red soil system, hydromorphic topsoil system, hydromorphic subsoil system) and eight soil processes (saprolitization, ferralitization, glaebulization, redoximorphism, eluviation/illuviation, salinization/solonization, sulfidization/sulfuricization and water erosion). The study demonstrates that this whole ecosystem has been placed into disequilibrium thereby developing severe land degradation problems as a result of rising saline sulfatic ground watertables and perched watertables due to land-clearing since European settlement. The purpose of this paper is to provide a methodology framework and overall summary for other papers in a series dealing essentially with detailed field and laboratory investigations of individual soil-water processes.

Many of the world’s agricultural areas have greatly reduced levels of natural vegetation. This results in highly fragmented mosaic landscapes with multiple land-use types. We examined the importance of vegetation and landscape pattern by comparing the bird assemblages of riparian zones, non-riparian forest patches, and pasture in a fragmented agricultural landscape in south-eastern Australia. Bird surveys were conducted every four weeks at 27 sites in the Goldfields region of central Victoria for one year. The landscape context (position and shape of patches) and vegetation attributes were measured for each site. We found that bird assemblages strongly differed among these landscape elements. Mean abundance was significantly greater at forested patches, and there was a three-fold reduction in species richness at pasture sites. Bird assemblage structure was influenced substantially more by vegetation than by the landscape context of sites. Our results indicate that riparian vegetation is a key element for avian diversity, even in massively altered landscapes. The restoration of riparian vegetation and its connectivity with adjacent forest types would greatly benefit bird assemblages in agricultural areas.

A pedo-hydrological method which involves interpreting features in soils that result from both ancient and modern processes along toposequences in a subcatchment of the Mt Lofty Ranges, South Australia, is used to construct conceptual soil-water-landscape models. This method links soil-landscape features to soil-water processes with strong emphasis on: (i) soil water-flow systems and (ii) soil-forming and soil-change processes. The conceptual model illustrates the interactions between soil processes acting in soil water-flow systems. This model is able to predict future modes of soil-landscape evolution under changing environmental conditions. As well, it may be used by land and water supply managers to develop more efficient management strategies under conditions of increasing land degradation (e.g. erosion and water pollution). A typical Palexeralf-Natraqualf hydro-toposequence of soils (i.e. catena consisting of red-yellow-grey duplex soils) is used as an example to illustrate this new approach. The landscape selected is undergoing severe soil degradation (i.e. waterlogging, dryland salinity, erosion and water pollution). The constructed conceptual soil-water-landscape model is the result of detailed pedo-hydrological investigations along toposequences in a representative subcatchment in the high rainfall zone (>600 mm) of the Mount Lofty Ranges, South Australia. The model illustrates in graphic form interactions between three soil water-flow systems (freely drained red soil system, hydromorphic topsoil system, hydromorphic subsoil system) and eight soil processes (saprolitization, ferralitization, glaebulization, redoximorphism, eluviation/illuviation, salinization/solonization, sulfidization/sulfuricization and water erosion). The study demonstrates that this whole ecosystem has been placed into disequilibrium thereby developing severe land degradation problems as a result of rising saline sulfatic ground watertables and perched watertables due to land-clearing since European settlement. The purpose of this paper is to provide a methodology framework and overall summary for other papers in a series dealing essentially with detailed field and laboratory investigations of individual soil-water processes.

Koala retrovirus, a recent discovery in Australian koalas, is endogenised in 100% of northern koalas but has lower prevalence in southern populations, with lower proviral and viral loads, and an undetermined level of endogenisation. KoRV has been associated with lymphoid neoplasia, e.g., lymphoma. Recent studies have revealed high complexity in southern koala retroviral infections, with a need to clarify what constitutes positive and negative cases. This study aimed to define KoRV infection status in Mount Lofty Ranges koalas in South Australia using RNA-seq and proviral analysis (n = 216). The basis for positivity of KoRV was deemed the presence of central regions of the KoRV genome (gag 2, pol, env 1, and env 2) and based on this, 41% (89/216) koalas were positive, 57% (124/216) negative, and 2% inconclusive. These genes showed higher expression in lymph node tissue from KoRV positive koalas with lymphoma compared with other KoRV positive koalas, which showed lower, fragmented expression. Terminal regions (LTRs, partial gag, and partial env) were present in SA koalas regardless of KoRV status, with almost all (99.5%, 215/216) koalas positive for gag 1 by proviral PCR. Further investigation is needed to understand the differences in KoRV infection in southern koala populations.

Landscapes in southern Australia have been extensively modified by a variety of human activities, predominantly agriculture and urban development. Over much of the area, native vegetation has been replaced with agriculture or buildings and infrastructure. A continuum exists from areas that remain largely intact, but are modified in some way (e.g. forests managed for timber production), to areas where the remaining native vegetation is fragmented to varying degrees. Habitat management will vary across this continuum, depending on the degree of habitat loss and isolation. In areas outside the main zones of agricultural and urban development, the process of habitat loss and fragmentation is less in evidence. Here, instead, the landscapes remain apparently structurally intact, in that the native vegetation is not actually removed. However, these landscapes have also, in many cases, been significantly modified, particularly by pastoralism and related activities, to the extent that their value as habitat is impaired. Declining habitat value in northern landscapes may lead to the same types of functional fragmentation as found in the south. An examination of the differences and similarities between southern and northern landscapes can highlight what can be learned from the southern experience which may be of value in savanna landscapes. In both cases, the importance of considering impacts in relation to species-specific responses needs to be emphasised.

Prior to this study, isolated trees were largely isolated from research. This study has provided a methodology, rigorous assessment of isolated tree density and distribution, and identified the potential ecological, social and economic importance of isolated trees, in a relatively small, but probably typical area of the wheat-sheep zone of eastern Australia. The abundance and decline of isolated native trees was measured by line-intersect sampling in the highly fragmented agricultural landscapes of the mid-Lachlan Valley of central New South Wales, Australia. A total of 7 000 trees were sampled along 5 678 km of transect on 441 aerial photographs. An isolated tree was defined as having no neighbouring tree within 25 m. The density of trees outside of remnants patches is low (0.3/ha) and has generally declined by 20% since the 1960s. The 1990s density of isolated trees equates to 275 000 trees across 830 000 ha of agricultural land not occupied by remnant vegetation patches larger than about 10 ha. The density of isolated trees was found to vary with land use with consistently fewer trees in cultivated areas compared to areas with no traces of cultivation. The isolated trees that remain within the agricultural landscape are not uniformly scattered. They exist as widely spaced clusters of isolated trees with 50% of trees having a nearest neighbouring tree within 25-49 m and less than 10% of trees had a nearest neighbour within a distance class greater than 100 m. Compared to the 1960s, isolated trees are now more isolated - the nearest neighbour distance has increased. The mean diameter of isolated tree crowns has significantly increased from 15 m in the 1960s to 18 m in the 1990s. The total canopy cover of isolated trees from the 1990s samples was 0.8% of the total study area below 400 m asl. A reversal in isolated tree decline will only occur if trees are replanted, or existing trees fenced to promote regeneration. Otherwise, isolated trees are dieing relicts of 150 years of clearing and intensive agriculture. This is of concern considering that we do not fully understand their value. We speculate on some of the ecological, economic and social values of these trees.

Rising saline groundwater and fresh perched water have increased over 120 years (modern processes) in the Mediterranean region (>600 mm per annum) of the Mt Lofty Ranges, South Australia. This was caused by replacement of native vegetation with pastures which use less water. Relationships between morphological features (mainly soil colour) and field measurements (e.g. watertable duration, salinity, and sodicity) were studied to 3 m at 12 sites down a representative toposequence of red-yellow-grey duplex soils (Palexeralfs-Natraqualfs), which are common from crest to flat in these catchments. Three soil systems were identified from groupings of soil features: (i) brown/grey topsoil system (e.g. A and E horizons), (ii) red subsoil system (e.g. Bt), and (iii) yellow/white subsoil system (e.g. Btng or Cg). A water duration index was developed to quantify water duration in the brown/grey topsoil system from perched water levels measured in 12 dipwells installed to 0.5 m. Nested piezometers were used to determine if unsaturated zones occurred within the subsoil systems. Measured water duration and levels were compared with the presence pr absence of inferred redoximorphic features. Most features in the brown/grey topsoil system and the red and yellow/white subsoil systems reflected differences in water duration. A conceptual model was constructed to match successive changes in hydrology with differences in soil morphology and thus distinguish between modern and relict (late Mesozoic) soil features that developed under past and present hydrological conditions.

In Australian temperate woodlands, most squirrel glider (Petaurus norfolcensis) habitats exist outside formal conservation reserves, often in highly fragmented agricultural landscapes. To conserve squirrel glider populations in such woodlands it is essential to define important habitats and understand how they are used. This study examines the nocturnal habitat use of squirrel gliders across five sites within an agricultural landscape in south-eastern Australia. Over a five-month period we radio-tracked 32 gliders to 372 nocturnal locations. We quantify characteristics of key nocturnal habitats and describe their use. Gliders were more likely to use large eucalypt trees, particularly yellow box (Eucalyptus melliodora) and mugga ironbark (E. sideroxylon). Nocturnal activity mostly took place high in the canopy of eucalypts, accounting for 74% of fixes. Multiple regression models revealed that feeding was more likely to occur in large, healthy trees close to drainage lines, with a preference for E. melliodora, when eucalypts were not flowering. Flowering trees were preferentially sought and were strongly associated with being large healthy trees that occur on ridges and upper slopes. Showing that the squirrel glider utilises key feeding structures (large healthy Eucalyptus trees) in different parts of the landscape at different times has direct management implications in the conservation and restoration of squirrel glider habitat, particularly in fragmented temperate woodland.

The objectives of this study were to develop a systematic approach to identify important soil morphological and vegetation field indicators to better target land management in degraded landscapes in a specific region. The authors were able to link the soil-landscape features to the main soil and water processes operating within the landscape. This information was used to develop a set of field indicators (e.g. soil colour) within a user-friendly soil classification key that is linked to land use options to form the basis of a manual. It was shown that information written in this format helped farmers and regional advisers to identify options for remediation of waterlogged and saline areas and to improve planning at property and catchment scales. The authors identified a series of steps to be taken in producing the manual. Steps 1–5 describe the soil layers and construct them in toposequences, which are then used to map soil types in key surrounding areas. Steps 6–9 involve the local community in developing the manual.The paper provides an account of how manuals have been produced for 2 badly degraded areas in southern Australia (Mount Lofty Ranges, South Australia; and western Victoria) and promotes the methodologies for other regions. Descriptive soil information is pictorially integrated along toposequences and applied to identify key soil features. Complex scientific processes and terminology are more simply communicated to local groups using coloured cross-sectional diagrams and photographs of soil and vegetation to overcome some of the perceived barriers to adoption of best management practices. We consider the approach should have generic application.

Context After fire, immigration from outside burnt areas is important for the recovery of faunal communities. However, for recovery to occur, the matrix around the fire must support source populations of immigrants. Therefore, the landscape context of fires may be a critical determinant of the species pool available for (re)colonisation, hence post-fire community composition. Increasingly, fires occur in fragmented systems, and there is limited knowledge of how the surrounding landscape interacts with post-fire community recovery. Aim The present study aimed to examine how landscape context influences faunal communities after large wildfires. Methods Three reserves burnt by wildfire were examined ~18 months before the study in the Mallee region of south-eastern Australia. In all cases the burnt area consisted of natural mallee woodland. Two fires occurred within a matrix of extensive natural vegetation, while the third fire burnt &gt;80% of a reserve situated within a highly fragmented, largely agricultural landscape. Birds, reptiles and mammals were surveyed at 90 sites inside and outside the fire boundaries, and relationships of species occurrence to reserve location, burnt versus unburnt status and distance from fire edge were all examined. Key results Post-fire faunal communities reflected the species in the surrounding unburnt landscape. Notably, open habitat specialists, invasive species and species that can persist in small habitat patches were prominent within the fragmented system. Post-fire fauna communities were also influenced by variation of the natural vegetation surrounding the fire. The occurrence of species with low dispersal ability (i.e. reptiles) was influenced by local (patch scale) vegetation structure. 2Conclusions The landscape context of fires is a major driver of the composition of post-fire faunal communities. Our results highlight the potential loss of species sensitive to fragmentation from fire-prone natural vegetation within modified landscapes, and that a reduced pool of potential immigrants leads to ‘attenuated succession’, compromising recovery of the pre-fire community. Implications Post-fire colonists reflect the surrounding landscapes species pool, such that reserves surrounded by fragmented or otherwise low quality habitat are at risk of attenuated succession after fire. Landscape context should be incorporated into conservation planning in fire-prone ecosystems, including consideration of surrounding habitat quality and connectivity and protecting long unburnt vegetation.

Inappropriate fire-regimes brought about by patterns of human settlement and land-use threaten plant diversity in Mediterranean-type climate (MTC) regions. In south-west Western Australia (SWWA), where there are many threatened plant species distributed across a range of human-modified landscapes, there is a need for approaches to identify where the threat is greatest. This requires knowledge of contemporary fire regimes, how they vary across landscapes, and the sensitivity of threatened species to these regimes. Currently, this information is lacking, and this limits strategic fire management. In this study we compiled fire response information for SWWA’s threatened plant species and undertook a bioregional assessment of variation in fire interval over the last 40 years. We determined the fire response traits of 242 (60%) of the region’s 401 extant threatened species. Over half of the 242 species were obligate seeders and will therefore have population dynamics particularly sensitive to fire interval. Our study highlights large differences in fire interval across nine bioregions in SWWA. The differences were greatest for the heavily cleared and fragmented bioregions compared with more continuously vegetated bioregions. We discuss how variations in the frequency of fire life-history traits and fire interval interact to determine the nature and relative level of threat posed by fire in these landscapes. Survival of many populations of threatened flora in this biodiversity hotspot will depend on developing appropriate fire regimes that match the regeneration requirements of each species.

Spatial modelling is increasingly being embraced by conservation practitioners and community groups to guide natural-asset management. Despite this boom in popularity, little guidance is often available on choosing the most applicable technique, and the relative merits and drawbacks of each approach. We present a case study in the biodiversity hotspot of south-western Australia where five forms of spatial modelling have previously been used by community conservation managers in this region: realistic GIS modelling, focal species, proximity analysis, Marxan and MaxEnt. We developed a set of criteria for effective spatial modelling and then evaluated each of these spatial-modelling techniques using these criteria. The criteria used in evaluating spatial-modelling tools were as follows: (1) capacity to quantify barriers to movement; (2) capacity to quantify habitat; (3) capacity to accurately predict target responses; (4) capacity to demonstrate how change will happen over differing time frames; (5) effectiveness of the tool within data limitations of a project; (6) ease to which outputs are understood; (7) utility of the tool within skill limitations of a project; and (8) efficacy within resource limitations of a project. None of the applications used met all criteria. When selecting spatial-modelling applications, a hybrid approach is advocated by using criteria that will reflect both the landscape-level conservation requirements and the capacity and objectives of conservation managers. To do this, we advocate using multiple modelling techniques to identify, quantify and ameliorate threats to meet the needs of regional biota.

The bird communities of six riparian woodland sites are described and compared with those of eight terrestrial woodland sites in the Central Tablelands near Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia. Riparian woodland, where still present in the Central Tablelands, is dominated by either relatively narrow strips of Casuarina cunninghamiana along stream banks or the less restricted Angophora floribunda trees associated with Eucalyptus melliodora?E. blakelyi woodlands. Four of the riparian sites were located within cleared agricultural land and two were located within a relatively large nature reserve. Bird censuses along a strip transect were conducted twice per season from spring 1993 to summer 1996. The riparian woodland communities contained within the cleared landscape of the Bathurst basin were found to support a diverse avifauna, a mix of woodland-forest and species associated with agricultural landscapes. Extensive observations of individual birds at riparian sites indicate that the tree canopy is the most widely used microhabitat stratum. While native riparian woodlands are generally degraded, their connectivity and stabilizing function (actual or potential) identifies them as a critical landscape component in maintenance or restoration programmes. Hence it is suggested that riparian strips could form the basis for rehabilitation initiatives within this landscape. Fenced plantings of endemic tree species supplemented by native understorey species could be linked with existing vegetation to enhance landscape connectivity. It is crucial that landholders become aware of the importance of riparian vegetation for nature conservation and stream stabilization. Incentives should be provided to landholders to encourage these areas to be fenced from stock in order to protect them from further degradation in a significantly disturbed ecosystem.

The impact of habitat fragmentation on arboreal mammals is poorly understood and potentially greater than for ground-dwelling mammals. We investigated the influence of landscape fragmentation on a generalist arboreal marsupial, the koomal (Trichosurus vulpecula hypoleucus), a geographically isolated subspecies of the common brushtail possum endemic to south-western Australia. Since European settlement this taxon has undergone a significant reduction in range and population. We describe a year-long trapping study, incorporating radio-tracking, of a koomal population in a fragmented agricultural landscape to determine how agriculture and habitat fragmentation affect populations. In all, 61 free-ranging individuals were captured. Mark–recapture modelling estimated the population of 28.8 per trapping event with a total population size of 69 individuals having been present in the test landscape during the course of the study. Population demographics were comparable with populations found in relatively continuous landscapes. Mean home-range size was 8.8 ha of remnant vegetation for males and 7.9 ha for females. Home ranges usually incorporated several patches. Utilisation of shrublands, wetlands, and areas infested with Phytophthora dieback was not observed. Individuals required access to a selection of suitable denning trees and distances between patches <100 m did not appear to impair movement, with gaps <400 m regularly crossed.

The commercially valuable root hemiparasite Santalum spicatum (R.Br.) A.DC. (sandalwood) once grew throughout the medium- to low-rainfall areas of the south-western agricultural region of Australia; however, this resource has been exhausted by over-exploitation and clearing for agriculture. There has been growing interest from the farming community and other investors in the development of a plantation Santalum spicatum industry in southern Western Australia. This study investigated the distribution of remnant S. spicatum within the Pallinup River catchment and assessed the risk of S. spicatum population decline due to salinity. The natural range of host species at different sites (river catchments) across the south coast was also investigated. Remnant populations of S.�spicatum within and adjacent to the Pallinup River catchment were small (1–70 trees) and highly fragmented. The risk of further population decline due to salinity was concluded to be small because remnant trees were generally growing in well drained, sandy soils that were elevated above (median 9 m) their immediate drainage line. Across the seven river catchments surveyed, S. spicatum occurred in a range of vegetation associations and parasitised numerous species (68) from a wide range of genera and families. The suite of species exploited varied within and between catchments. Thirty species, including most monocots and Myrtaceae, were not successfully parasitised. Remnant S. spicatum always occurred on well drained soil types that supported open-woodland or mallee–heath communities. Sandalwood plantations, supported by numerous individuals of a range of host species (10–40 species), were shown to be productive in terms of sandalwood growth. The scale of the developing sandalwood plantation industry is likely to be small and unlikely to cover large areas of catchments. Thus, this industry alone is unlikely to address the salinity crisis through broadscale recharge management. However, additional to on-site recharge reduction, biodiverse host plantations may improve the prospects for biodiversity and rivers in salinising landscapes through the protection and enhancement of natural biodiversity, creation of new habitat, conservation of plant species and by providing a commercial incentive to protect biodiversity.

Managing fire regimes is increasingly recognised as important for biodiversity conservation in fragmented agricultural landscapes in fire-prone regions. In the global biodiversity hotspot of south-west Western Australia, chaining and burning is a novel technique for facilitating fire management. Vegetation is first dislodged using a chain, then after a period of curing, burnt. The effects on plant communities are largely unstudied, despite the potential consequences of combining two disturbance events. We hypothesised that outcomes would vary depending on plant functional types defined by disturbance response. We compared plant community composition and recruitment and resprouting of plant functional types in mallee-heath subject to chaining and burning, burning only and neither of these. The effects of chaining and burning did not differ from only burning at the community level. Importantly, however, we recorded 90% fewer recruits of serotinous, obligate seeders in chained and burnt compared with only burnt plots, and a 44% decrease in their species richness. By contrast, recruits of obligate seeding shrubs and fire-ephemeral herbs with persistent soil-stored seed banks increased by 166% in chained and burnt plots. Sprouters showed little difference. We conclude that chaining and burning is likely to significantly alter vegetation composition, and potentially poses a significant threat to serotinous, obligate seeders. These impacts require consideration in fire management planning.

Microhabitat use by the long-nosed potoroo, Potorous tridactylus, and six other species of small mammal was studied in remnant forest vegetation in south-western Victoria, Australia. Throughout its geographic range, P. tridactylus is consistently associated with dense vegetation in the ground and shrub strata. However, at a local scale, captures of P. tridactylus were not clearly associated with a particular floristic group, and were not strongly correlated with any structural feature of the vegetation. Rather, individuals utilised a range of sites of differing floristic composition and vegetation density. Dense cover provided diurnal shelter and protection from predators, whereas food resources were most abundant in adjacent more open areas. The use of vegetation mosaics or ecotones that allow the inclusion of contrasting microhabitats within an individual home range appears to be characteristic of potoroids in temperate environments. Such mosaics may result from topographic or edaphic variation, or from sera1 successional stages in vegetation following disturbance. Of the other small mammals, the bush rat, Rattus fuscipes, and the brown antechinus, Antechinus stuartii, favoured floristic groups that provided dense low cover. Captures of the swamp rat, Rattus lutreolus, were clumped, and centred on several sites along the forest edge on impeded drainage where potential foods were common. The long-nosed bandicoot, Perameles nasuta, and the southern brown bandicoot, Isoodon obesulus, were uncommon and clear microhabitat preferences were not displayed. The house mouse, Mus musculus, was of transient occurrence, mostly during autumn, and no obvious habitat preference was apparent. The quality and availability of microhabitats in remnant vegetation, together with landscape structure, are important in ensuring the persistence and conservation of small mammals in fragmented landscapes.

Context Vehicle-strike has been identified as a key threatening process for koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) survival and persistence in Australia. Roads and traffic act as barriers to koala movement and can impact dispersal and metapopulation dynamics. Given the high cost of wildlife mitigation structures such as purpose-built fauna-specific underpasses or overpasses (eco-passages), road construction and management agencies are constantly seeking cost-effective strategies that facilitate safe passage for fauna across roads. Here we report on an array of detection methods trialled to verify use of retrofitted road infrastructure (existing water culverts or bridge underpasses) by individual koalas in fragmented urban landscapes in south-east Queensland. Aims The study examined whether the retrofitting of existing road structures at six sites facilitated safe passage for koalas across roads. Our primary objective was to record utilisation of retrofitted infrastructure at the level of the individual. Methods We used a combination of existing monitoring methods such as GPS/VHF collars, camera traps, sand plots, and RFID tags, along with a newly developed animal-borne wireless identification (WID) tag and datalogging system, specifically designed for this project, to realise the study aims. Key results We were able to verify 130 crossings by koalas involving a retrofitted structure or a road surface over a 30-month period by using correlated data from complementary methods. We noted that crossings were generally uncommon and mostly undertaken by only a subset of our tagged individuals at each site (21% overall). Conclusions An important element of this study was that crossing events could be accurately determined at the level of the individual. This allowed for detailed assessment of eco-passage usage, rather than the more usual approach of simply recording species’ presence. Implications This study underscores the value of identifying the constraints of each individual monitoring method in relation to site conditions. It also highlights the benefits of contingency planning to limit data loss (i.e. using more than one method to collect data). We suggest an approach that uses complementary monitoring methods has significant advantages for researchers, particularly with reference to improving understanding of whether eco-passages are meeting their prescribed conservation goals.

Abstract Area sensitivity in songbirds is commonly attributed to increased nest predation in forest fragments. In 1995 and 1996, we tested whether the nest predators and nesting success of an area-sensitive forest bird, the Eastern Yellow Robin (Eopsaltria australis), varied with fragment size, and we also conducted an artificial nest experiment. The study occurred in two small (55 ha) and two large (>400 ha) forest fragments in a matrix of agricultural land in New South Wales, Australia. Predation accounted for 95% of all failures of 282 robin nests, and the survival of robin nests was negatively correlated with how frequently we observed avian nest predators near nests (i.e. nest-predator activity). Of 461 artificial nests, 84% were depredated, nearly all (99%) by birds. Thus, birds were important predators of nests. The abundance, species richness, and activity of avian nest predators were not related to fragment size. Survival of robin nests averaged 19%; nests in small fragments had a 22% chance of producing at least one fledgling compared with 15% in large fragments, but the difference was not significant. Survival of artificial nests averaged 12% in both small and large fragments. Nest-predator activity accounted for the most variation (68%) in the fate of robin nests, followed by the cumulative density of open-cup nesters (16%). The placement of robin nests had no influence on nest fate. We conclude that nest predation was not area dependent and propose food supply as an alternative hypothesis to explain area sensitivity. We suggest that, rather than being related to fragment size, nest predation increases with decreasing forest cover in a landscape. Increased nest predation in fragmented compared with contiguous landscapes may lower the population viability of songbirds in a region, and hence regional numbers. Therefore, the spatial scale at which fragmentation influences nest predation and songbird populations must be considered carefully.

Plant species conservation relies on their reproductive success and likelihood of population persistence. Knowledge of plant mating systems, particularly the relationship between plants and their pollinators, is fundamental to inform conservation efforts. This knowledge could be critical for prioritising efforts in human-dominated fragmented landscapes such as the world’s biodiversity hotspots, where reproductive success can be compromised due to habitat loss, limited access to pollinators or other factors. Yet, fundamental data on plant mating systems are lacking for many Australian plants. Here we determined the mating systems of native plant species growing in native woodland fragments within Perth’s urban landscape in south-western Australia. We manipulated insect access to flowers and pollen transfer on five locally common native species, then observed floral visitors and examined reproductive success. Hemiandra pungens and Patersonia occidentalis had mixed mating systems with some ability to self-pollinate, whereas Dianella revoluta and Jacksonia sericea were reliant on insects for outcross pollination. The fruits and seeds produced by Tricoryne elatior were too low to draw conclusions about its mating system. The introduced honey bee (Apis mellifera) was the sole visitor to the mixed mating species, whereas native bees visited D. revoluta and J. sericea (one bee species each). Overall, our data suggest that D. revoluta and J. sericea are more vulnerable to fragmentation than H. pungens and P. occidentalis. Although insects contributed significantly to the reproductive output of the two former plant species, our observations suggested low frequency and richness of insect visitors to these urban fragments. More research is required to determine the generality of our findings. A comparative study in larger native woodland fragments would help estimate the effect of fragmentation on insect pollinators and consequences for the insect-reliant plant species.

Context Artificial refuges (cover boards) are a popular method to survey and monitor herpetofauna worldwide. However, one limitation of using artificial refuges in terrestrial environments is the low detection rates of arboreal species. Furthermore, destructive search techniques can damage critical microhabitat such as exfoliating rock or flaking bark of mature trees. Aim We tested a non-destructive, passive method of sampling arboreal reptiles in fragmented agricultural landscapes in south-eastern Australia. Methods We installed 84 artificial bark refuges consisting of strips of non-toxic, closed-cell foam attached to eucalypt trees in 13 patches of remnant vegetation. We used Bayesian statistics to compare differences in detection rates among artificial bark refuges, terrestrial artificial refuges and active searches of natural habitat over a 4-year period. Key results Active searches combined with terrestrial artificial refuges detected the highest number of reptile species, including several cryptic fossorial species. Artificial bark refuges detected, on average, 132 times more individuals of the arboreal southern marbled gecko, Christinus marmoratus, than did terrestrial refuges. Gecko abundance patterns were related to tree characteristics such as tree size, bark thickness and stand basal area, as well as survey year. Conclusions Traditional survey methods such as terrestrial cover boards, in combination with active searches of natural habitat, may significantly underestimate counts for arboreal gecko species. Implications Artificial bark refuges provide a cost-effective, non-destructive and durable method for surveying and monitoring arboreal reptiles in woodland environments over short to medium time frames. Foil-backed, closed-cell foam has broad application for use in spatial capture–recapture studies and long-term monitoring of arboreal reptiles. This method also may be effective for procuring records of threatened arboreal geckos or as a solution for providing temporary habitat in ecological restoration projects.

The antiquity of the Australian landscape has long been the subject of debate, with some studies inferring extraordinary longevity (>108 myr) for some subaerial landforms dating back to the early Paleozoic. A number of early Permian glacial erosion surfaces in the Fleurieu Peninsula, southeastern Australia, provide an opportunity to test the notion of long-term subaerial emergence, and thus tectonic and geomorphic stability, of parts of the Australian continent. Here we present results of apatite fission track analysis (AFTA) applied to a suite of samples collected from localities where glacial erosion features of early Permian age are developed. Our synthesis of AFTA results with geological data reveals four cooling episodes (C1-4), which are interpreted to represent distinct stages of exhumation. These episodes occurred during the Ediacaran to Ordovician (C1), mid-Carboniferous (C2), Permian to mid-Triassic (C3) and Eocene to Oligocene (C4).The interpretation of AFTA results indicates that the Neoproterozoic−Lower Paleozoic metasedimentary rocks and granitic intrusions upon which the glacial rock surfaces generally occur were exhumed to the surface by the latest Carboniferous−earliest Permian during episodes C2 and/or C3, possibly as a far-field response to the intraplate Alice Springs Orogeny. The resulting landscapes were sculpted by glacial erosive processes. Our interpretation of AFTA results suggests that the erosion surfaces and overlying Permian sedimentary rocks were subsequently heated to between c. 60 and 80°C, which we interpret as recording burial by a sedimentary cover comprising Permian and younger strata, roughly 1 km in thickness. This interpretation is consistent with existing thermochronological datasets from this region, and also with palynological and geochronological datasets from sediments in offshore Mesozoic−Cenozoic-age basins along the southern Australian margin that indicate substantial recycling of Permian−Cretaceous sediments. We propose that the exhumation which led to the contemporary exposure of the glacial erosion features began during the Eocene to Oligocene (episode C4), during the initial stages of intraplate deformation that has shaped the Mt Lofty and Flinders Ranges in South Australia. Our findings are consistent with several recent studies, which suggest that burial and exhumation have played a key role in the preservation and contemporary re-exposure of Gondwanan geomorphic features in the Australian landscape.

Abstract Many orchids are characterized by small, patchily distributed populations. Resolving how they persist is important for understanding the ecology of this hyper-diverse family, many members of which are of conservation concern. Ten populations of the common terrestrial orchid Drakaea glyptodon from south-western Australia were genotyped with ten nuclear and five plastid simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. Levels and partitioning of genetic variation and effective population sizes (Ne) were estimated. Spatial genetic structure of nuclear diversity, together with plastid data, were used to infer the effective number of seed parents per population. We found high genetic diversity, Ne values that generally exceed predictions based on the number of flowering individuals and moderate levels of gene flow. Two populations were founded by less than five colonists suggesting some populations are colonized by few seeds, with growth largely resulting from in situ recruitment. A value of 3.65 for mp /ms indicates that pollinators play a greater role than seed in introducing genetic diversity to populations via gene flow. Our results highlight that D. glyptodon is highly effective at persisting in patchily distributed populations. However, it is important to examine how insights from this common, widespread species transfer to species that are rare and/or occur in fragmented landscapes.

Introduction One of the ways in which ‘country’ is made to work discursively is in ‘country music’ – defining a genre and sensibility in music production, marketing and consumption. This article seeks to excavate one small niche in the historical geography of country music to explore exactly how discursive antecedents emerged, and crucially, how images associated with ‘country’ surfaced and travelled internationally via one of the new ‘global’ media of the first half of the twentieth century – sheet music. My central arguments are twofold: first, that alongside aural qualities and lyrical content, the visual elements of sheet music were important and thus far have been under-acknowledged. Sheet music diffused the imagery connecting ‘country’ to music, to particular landscapes, and masculinities. In the literature on country music much emphasis has been placed on film, radio and television (Tichi; Peterson). Yet, sheet music was for several decades the most common way people bought personal copies of songs they liked and intended to play at home on piano, guitar or ukulele. This was particularly the case in Australia – geographically distant, and rarely included in international tours by American country music stars. Sheet music is thus a rich text to reveal the historical contours of ‘country’. My second and related argument is that that the possibilities for the globalising of ‘country’ were first explored in music. The idea of transnational discourses associated with ‘country’ and ‘rurality’ is relatively new (Cloke et al; Gorman-Murray et al; McCarthy), but in music we see early evidence of a globalising discourse of ‘country’ well ahead of the time period usually analysed. Accordingly, my focus is on the sheet music of country songs in Australia in the first half of the twentieth century and on how visual representations hybridised travelling themes to create a new vernacular ‘country’ in Australia. Creating ‘Country’ Music Country music, as its name suggests, is perceived as the music of rural areas, “defined in contrast to metropolitan norms” (Smith 301). However, the ‘naturalness’ of associations between country music and rurality belies a history of urban capitalism and the refinement of deliberate methods of marketing music through associated visual imagery. Early groups wore suits and dressed for urban audiences – but then altered appearances later, on the insistence of urban record companies, to emphasise rurality and cowboy heritage. Post-1950, ‘country’ came to replace ‘folk’ music as a marketing label, as the latter was considered to have too many communistic references (Hemphill 5), and the ethnic mixing of earlier folk styles was conveniently forgotten in the marketing of ‘country’ music as distinct from African American ‘race’ and ‘r and b’ music. Now an industry of its own with multinational headquarters in Nashville, country music is a ‘cash cow’ for entertainment corporations, with lower average production costs, considerable profit margins, and marketing advantages that stem from tropes of working class identity and ‘rural’ honesty (see Lewis; Arango). Another of country music’s associations is with American geography – and an imagined heartland in the colonial frontier of the American West. Slippages between ‘country’ and ‘western’ in music, film and dress enhance this. But historical fictions are masked: ‘purists’ argue that western dress and music have nothing to do with ‘country’ (see truewesternmusic.com), while recognition of the Spanish-Mexican, Native American and Hawaiian origins of ‘cowboy’ mythology is meagre (George-Warren and Freedman). Similarly, the highly international diffusion and adaptation of country music as it rose to prominence in the 1940s is frequently downplayed (Connell and Gibson), as are the destructive elements of colonialism and dispossession of indigenous peoples in frontier America (though Johnny Cash’s 1964 album The Ballads Of The American Indian: Bitter Tears was an exception). Adding to the above is the way ‘country’ operates discursively in music as a means to construct particular masculinities. Again, linked to rural imagery and the American frontier, the dominant masculinity is of rugged men wrestling nature, negotiating hardships and the pressures of family life. Country music valorises ‘heroic masculinities’ (Holt and Thompson), with echoes of earlier cowboy identities reverberating into contemporary performance through dress style, lyrical content and marketing imagery. The men of country music mythology live an isolated existence, working hard to earn an income for dependent families. Their music speaks to the triumph of hard work, honest values (meaning in this context a musical style, and lyrical concerns that are ‘down to earth’, ‘straightforward’ and ‘without pretence’) and physical strength, in spite of neglect from national governments and uncaring urban leaders. Country music has often come to be associated with conservative politics, heteronormativity, and whiteness (Gibson and Davidson), echoing the wider politics of ‘country’ – it is no coincidence, for example, that the slogan for the 2008 Republican National Convention in America was ‘country first’. And yet, throughout its history, country music has also enabled more diverse gender performances to emerge – from those emphasising (or bemoaning) domesticity; assertive femininity; creative negotiation of ‘country’ norms by gay men; and ‘alternative’ culture (captured in the marketing tag, ‘alt.country’); to those acknowledging white male victimhood, criminality (‘the outlaw’), vulnerability and cruelty (see Johnson; McCusker and Pecknold; Saucier). Despite dominant tropes of ‘honesty’, country music is far from transparent, standing for certain values and identities, and yet enabling the construction of diverse and contradictory others. Historical analysis is therefore required to trace the emergence of ‘country’ in music, as it travelled beyond America. A Note on Sheet Music as Media Source Sheet music was one of the main modes of distribution of music from the 1930s through to the 1950s – a formative period in which an eclectic group of otherwise distinct ‘hillbilly’ and ‘folk’ styles moved into a single genre identity, and after which vinyl singles and LP records with picture covers dominated. Sheet music was prevalent in everyday life: beyond radio, a hit song was one that was widely purchased as sheet music, while pianos and sheet music collections (stored in a piece of furniture called a ‘music canterbury’) in family homes were commonplace. Sheet music is in many respects preferable to recorded music as a form of evidence for historical analysis of country music. Picture LP covers did not arrive until the late 1950s (by which time rock and roll had surpassed country music). Until then, 78 rpm shellac discs, the main form of pre-recorded music, featured generic brown paper sleeves from the individual record companies, or city retail stores. Also, while radio was clearly central to the consumption of music in this period, it obviously also lacked the pictorial element that sheet music could provide. Sheet music bridged the music and printing industries – the latter already well-equipped with colour printing, graphic design and marketing tools. Sheet music was often literally crammed with information, providing the researcher with musical notation, lyrics, cover art and embedded advertisements – aural and visual texts combined. These multiple dimensions of sheet music proved useful here, for clues to the context of the music/media industries and geography of distribution (for instance, in addresses for publishers and sheet music retail shops). Moreover, most sheet music of the time used rich, sometimes exaggerated, images to convince passing shoppers to buy songs that they had possibly never heard. As sheet music required caricature rather than detail or historical accuracy, it enabled fantasy without distraction. In terms of representations of ‘country’, then, sheet music is perhaps even more evocative than film or television. Hundreds of sheet music items were collected for this research over several years, through deliberate searching (for instance, in library archives and specialist sheet music stores) and with some serendipity (for instance, when buying second hand sheet music in charity shops or garage sales). The collected material is probably not representative of all music available at the time – it is as much a specialised personal collection as a comprehensive survey. However, at least some material from all the major Australian country music performers of the time were found, and the resulting collection appears to be several times larger than that held currently by the National Library of Australia (from which some entries were sourced). All examples here are of songs written by, or cover art designed for Australian country music performers. For brevity’s sake, the following analysis of the sheet music follows a crudely chronological framework. Country Music in Australia Before ‘Country’ Country music did not ‘arrive’ in Australia from America as a fully-finished genre category; nor was Australia at the time without rural mythology or its own folk music traditions. Associations between Australian national identity, rurality and popular culture were entrenched in a period of intense creativity and renewed national pride in the decades prior to and after Federation in 1901. This period saw an outpouring of art, poetry, music and writing in new nationalist idiom, rooted in ‘the bush’ (though drawing heavily on Celtic expressions), and celebrating themes of mateship, rural adversity and ‘battlers’. By the turn of the twentieth century, such myths, invoked through memory and nostalgia, had already been popularised. Australia had a fully-established system of colonies, capital cities and state governments, and was highly urbanised. Yet the poetry, folk music and art, invariably set in rural locales, looked back to the early 1800s, romanticising bush characters and frontier events. The ‘bush ballad’ was a central and recurring motif, one that commentators have argued was distinctly, and essentially ‘Australian’ (Watson; Smith). Sheet music from this early period reflects the nationalistic, bush-orientated popular culture of the time: iconic Australian fauna and flora are prominent, and Australian folk culture is emphasised as ‘native’ (being the first era of cultural expressions from Australian-born residents). Pioneer life and achievements are celebrated. ‘Along the road to Gundagai’, for instance, was about an iconic Australian country town and depicted sheep droving along rustic trails with overhanging eucalypts. Male figures are either absent, or are depicted in situ as lone drovers in the archetypal ‘shepherd’ image, behind their flocks of sheep (Figure 1). Figure 1: No. 1 Magpie Ballads – The Pioneer (c1900) and Along the road to Gundagai (1923). Further colonial ruralities developed in Australia from the 1910s to 1940s, when agrarian values grew in the promotion of Australian agricultural exports. Australia ‘rode on the sheep’s back’ to industrialisation, and governments promoted rural development and inland migration. It was a period in which rural lifestyles were seen as superior to those in the crowded inner city, and government strategies sought to create a landed proletariat through post-war land settlement and farm allotment schemes. National security was said to rely on populating the inland with those of European descent, developing rural industries, and breeding a healthier and yet compliant population (Dufty), from which armies of war-ready men could be recruited in times of conflict. Popular culture served these national interests, and thus during these decades, when ‘hillbilly’ and other North American music forms were imported, they were transformed, adapted and reworked (as in other places such as Canada – see Lehr). There were definite parallels in the frontier narratives of the United States (Whiteoak), and several local adaptations followed: Tex Morton became Australia’s ‘Yodelling boundary rider’ and Gordon Parsons became ‘Australia’s yodelling bushman’. American songs were re-recorded and performed, and new original songs written with Australian lyrics, titles and themes. Visual imagery in sheet music built upon earlier folk/bush frontier themes to re-cast Australian pastoralism in a more settled, modernist and nationalist aesthetic; farms were places for the production of a robust nation. Where male figures were present on sheet music covers in the early twentieth century, they became more prominent in this period, and wore Akubras (Figure 2). The lyrics to John Ashe’s Growin’ the Golden Fleece (1952) exemplify this mix of Australian frontier imagery, new pastoralist/nationalist rhetoric, and the importation of American cowboy masculinity: Go west and take up sheep, man, North Queensland is the shot But if you don’t get rich, man, you’re sure to get dry rot Oh! Growin’ the golden fleece, battlin’ a-way out west Is bound to break your flamin’ heart, or else expand your chest… We westerners are handy, we can’t afford to crack Not while the whole darn’d country is riding on our back Figure 2: Eric Tutin’s Shearers’ Jamboree (1946). As in America, country music struck a chord because it emerged “at a point in history when the project of the creation and settlement of a new society was underway but had been neither completed nor abandoned” (Dyer 33). Governments pressed on with the colonial project of inland expansion in Australia, despite the theft of indigenous country this entailed, and popular culture such as music became a means to normalise and naturalise the process. Again, mutations of American western imagery, and particular iconic male figures were important, as in Roy Darling’s (1945) Overlander Trail (Figure 3): Wagon wheels are rolling on, and the days seem mighty long Clouds of heat-dust in the air, bawling cattle everywhere They’re on the overlander trail Where only sheer determination will prevail Men of Aussie with a job to do, they’ll stick and drive the cattle through And though they sweat they know they surely must Keep on the trail that winds a-head thro’ heat and dust All sons of Aussie and they will not fail. Sheet music depicted silhouetted men in cowboy hats on horses (either riding solo or in small groups), riding into sunsets or before looming mountain ranges. Music – an important part of popular culture in the 1940s – furthered the colonial project of invading, securing and transforming the Australian interior by normalising its agendas and providing it with heroic male characters, stirring tales and catchy tunes. Figure 3: ‘Roy Darling’s (1945) Overlander Trail and Smoky Dawson’s The Overlander’s Song (1946). ‘Country Music’ Becomes a (Globalised) Genre Further growth in Australian country music followed waves of popularity in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, and was heavily influenced by new cross-media publicity opportunities. Radio shows expanded, and western TV shows such as Bonanza and On the Range fuelled a ‘golden age’. Australian performers such as Slim Dusty and Smokey Dawson rose to fame (see Fitzgerald and Hayward) in an era when rural-urban migration peaked. Sheet music reflected the further diffusion and adoption of American visual imagery: where male figures were present on sheet music covers, they became more prominent than before and wore Stetsons. Some were depicted as chiselled-faced but simple men, with plain clothing and square jaws. Others began to more enthusiastically embrace cowboy looks, with bandana neckerchiefs, rawhide waistcoats, embellished and harnessed tall shaft boots, pipe-edged western shirts with wide collars, smile pockets, snap fasteners and shotgun cuffs, and fringed leather jackets (Figure 4). Landscapes altered further too: cacti replaced eucalypts, and iconic ‘western’ imagery of dusty towns, deserts, mesas and buttes appeared (Figure 5). Any semblance of folk music’s appeal to rustic authenticity was jettisoned in favour of showmanship, as cowboy personas were constructed to maximise cinematic appeal. Figure 4: Al Dexter’s Pistol Packin’ Mama (1943) and Reg Lindsay’s (1954) Country and Western Song Album. Figure 5: Tim McNamara’s Hitching Post (1948) and Smoky Dawson’s Golden West Album (1951). Far from slavish mimicry of American culture, however, hybridisations were common. According to Australian music historian Graeme Smith (300): “Australian place names appear, seeking the same mythological resonance that American localisation evoked: hobos became bagmen […] cowboys become boundary riders.” Thus alongside reproductions of the musical notations of American songs by Lefty Frizzel, Roy Carter and Jimmie Rodgers were songs with localised themes by new Australian stars such as Reg Lindsay and Smoky Dawson: My curlyheaded buckaroo, My home way out back, and On the Murray Valley. On the cover of The square dance by the billabong (Figure 6) – the title of which itself was a conjunction of archetypal ‘country’ images from both America and Australia – a background of eucalypts and windmills frames dancers in classic 1940s western (American) garb. In the case of Tex Morton’s Beautiful Queensland (Figure 7), itself mutated from W. Lee O’Daniel’s Beautiful Texas (c1945), the sheet music instructed those playing the music that the ‘names of other states may be substituted for Queensland’. ‘Country’ music had become an established genre, with normative values, standardised images and themes and yet constituted a stylistic formula with enough polysemy to enable local adaptations and variations. Figure 6: The Square dance by the billabong, Vernon Lisle, 1951. Figure 7: Beautiful Queensland, Tex Morton, c1945 source: http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-vn1793930. Conclusions In country music images of place and masculinity combine. In music, frontier landscapes are populated by rugged men living ‘on the range’ in neo-colonial attempts to tame the land and convert it to productive uses. This article has considered only one media – sheet music – in only one country (Australia) and in only one time period (1900-1950s). There is much more to say than was possible here about country music, place and gender – particularly recently, since ‘country’ has fragmented into several niches, and marketing of country music via cable television and the internet has ensued (see McCusker and Pecknold). My purpose here has been instead to explore the early origins of ‘country’ mythology in popular culture, through a media source rarely analysed. Images associated with ‘country’ travelled internationally via sheet music, immensely popular in the 1930s and 1940s before the advent of television. The visual elements of sheet music contributed to the popularisation and standardisation of genre expectations and appearances, and yet these too travelled and were adapted and varied in places like Australia which had their own colonial histories and folk music heritages. Evidenced here is how combinations of geographical and gender imagery embraced imported American cowboy imagery and adapted it to local markets and concerns. Australia saw itself as a modern rural utopia with export aspirations and a desire to secure permanence through taming and populating its inland. Sheet music reflected all this. So too, sheet music reveals the historical contours of ‘country’ as a transnational discourse – and the extent to which ‘country’ brought with it a clearly defined set of normative values, a somewhat exaggerated cowboy masculinity, and a remarkable capacity to be moulded to local circumstances. Well before later and more supposedly ‘global’ media such as the internet and television, the humble printed sheet of notated music was steadily shaping ‘country’ imagery, and an emergent international geography of cultural flows. References Arango, Tim. “Cashville USA.” Fortune, Jan 29, 2007. Sept 3, 2008, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/01/22/8397980/index.htm. Cloke, Paul, Marsden, Terry and Mooney, Patrick, eds. Handbook of Rural Studies, London: Sage, 2006. Connell, John and Gibson, Chris. Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place, London: Routledge, 2003. Dufty, Rae. Rethinking the politics of distribution: the geographies and governmentalities of housing assistance in rural New South Wales, Australia, PhD thesis, UNSW, 2008. Dyer, Richard. White: Essays on Race and Culture, London: Routledge, 1997. George-Warren, Holly and Freedman, Michelle. How the West was Worn: a History of Western Wear, New York: Abrams, 2000. Fitzgerald, Jon and Hayward, Phil. “At the confluence: Slim Dusty and Australian country music.” Outback and Urban: Australian Country Music. Ed. Phil Hayward. Gympie: Australian Institute of Country Music Press, 2003. 29-54. Gibson, Chris and Davidson, Deborah. “Tamworth, Australia’s ‘country music capital’: place marketing, rural narratives and resident reactions.” Journal of Rural Studies 20 (2004): 387-404. Gorman-Murray, Andrew, Darian-Smith, Kate and Gibson, Chris. “Scaling the rural: reflections on rural cultural studies.” Australian Humanities Review 45 (2008): in press. Hemphill, Paul. The Nashville Sound: Bright Lights and Country Music, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970. Holt, Douglas B. and Thompson, Craig J. “Man-of-action heroes: the pursuit of heroic masculinity in everyday consumption.” Journal of Consumer Research 31 (2004). Johnson, Corey W. “‘The first step is the two-step’: hegemonic masculinity and dancing in a country western gay bar.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 18 (2004): 445-464. Lehr, John C. “‘Texas (When I die)’: national identity and images of place in Canadian country music broadcasts.” The Canadian Geographer 27 (1983): 361-370. Lewis, George H. “Lap dancer or hillbilly deluxe? The cultural construction of modern country music.” Journal of Popular Culture, 31 (1997): 163-173. McCarthy, James. “Rural geography: globalizing the countryside.” Progress in Human Geography 32 (2008): 132-137. McCusker, Kristine M. and Pecknold, Diane. Eds. A Boy Named Sue: Gender and Country Music. UP of Mississippi, 2004. Peterson, Richard A. Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997. Saucier, Karen A. “Healers and heartbreakers: images of women and men in country music.” Journal of Popular Culture 20 (1986): 147-166. Smith, Graeme. “Australian country music and the hillbilly yodel.” Popular Music 13 (1994): 297-311. Tichi, Cecelia. Readin’ Country Music. Durham: Duke UP, 1998. truewesternmusic.com “True western music.”, Sept 3, 2008, http://truewesternmusic.com/. Watson, Eric. Country Music in Australia. Sydney: Rodeo Publications, 1984. Whiteoak, John. “Two frontiers: early cowboy music and Australian popular culture.” Outback and Urban: Australian Country Music. Ed. P. Hayward. Gympie: AICMP: 2003. 1-28.

IntroductionThe “North” is given explicitly “Nordic” value in extreme metal, as a vehicle for narratives of identity, nationalism and ideology. However, we also contend that “Nordicness” is articulated in diverse and contradictory ways in extreme metal contexts. We examine Nordicness in three key iterations: firstly, Nordicness as a brand tied to extremity and “authenticity”; secondly, Nordicness as an expression of exclusory ethnic belonging and ancestry; and thirdly, Nordicness as an imagined community of liberal democracy.In situating Nordicness across these iterations, we call into focus how the value of the “North” in metal discourse unfolds in different contexts with different implications. We argue that “Nordicness” as it is represented in extreme metal scenes cannot be considered as a uniform, essential category, but rather one marked by tensions and paradoxes that undercut the possibility of any singular understanding of the “North”. Deploying textual and critical discourse analysis, we analyse what Nordicness is made to mean in extreme metal scenes. Furthermore, we critique understandings of the “North” as a homogenous category and instead interrogate the plural ways in which “Nordic” meaning is articulated in metal. We focus specifically on Nordic Extreme Metal. This subgenre has been chosen with an eye to the regional complexities of the Nordic area in Northern Europe, the popularity of extreme metal in Nordic markets, and the successful global marketing of Nordic metal bands and styles.We use the term “Nordic” in line with Loftsdóttir and Jensen’s definition, wherein the “Nordic countries” encompass Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark and Finland, and the autonomous regions of Greenland: the Faroe Islands and the Aland Islands (3). “Nordic-ness”, they argue, is the cultural identity of the Nordic countries, reified through self-perception, internationalisation and “national branding” (Loftsdóttir and Jensen 2).In referring to “extreme metal”, we draw from Kahn-Harris’s characterisation of the term. “Extreme metal” represents a cluster of heavy metal subgenres–primarily black metal, death metal, thrash metal, doom metal and grindcore–marked by their “extremity”; their impetus towards “[un]conventional musical aesthetics” (Kahn-Harris 6).Nonetheless, we remain acutely aware of the complexities that attend both terms. Just as extreme metal itself is “exceptionally diverse” (Kahn-Harris 6) and “constantly developing and reconfiguring” (Kahn-Harris 7), the category of the “Nordic” is also a site of “diverse experiences” (Loftsdóttir & Jensen 3). We seek to move beyond any essentialist understanding of the “Nordic” and move towards a critical mapping of the myriad ways in which the “Nordic” is given value in extreme metal contexts.Branding the North: Nordicness as Extremity and AuthenticityMetal’s relationship with the Nordic countries has become a key area of interest for both popular and scholarly accounts of heavy metal as the genre has rapidly expanded in the region. The Nordic countries currently boast the highest rate of metal bands per capita (Grandoni). Since the mid-2000s, metal scholars have displayed an accelerated interest in the “cultural aesthetics and identity politics” of metal in Northern Europe (Brown 261). Wider popular interest in Nordic metal has been assisted by the notoriety of the Norwegian black metal scene of the early 1990s, wherein a series of murders and church arsons committed by scene members formed the basis for popular texts such as Moynihan and Søderlind’s book Lords of Chaos and Aites and Ewell’s documentary Until the Light Takes Us.Invocations of Nordicness in metal music are not a new phenomenon, nor have such allusions been strictly limited to Northern European artists. Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden displayed an interest in Norse mythology, while Venom and Manowar frequently drew on Nordic imagery in their performance and visual aesthetics.This interest in the North was largely ephemeral–the use of popular Nordic iconography stressed romanticised constructions of the North as a site of masculine liberty, rather than locating such archetypes in a historical context. Such narratives of Nordic masculinity, liberty and heathenry nevertheless become central to heavy metal’s contextual discourses, and point to the ways in which “Nordicness” becomes mobilised as a particular branded category.Whilst Nordic “branding” for earlier heavy metal bands was largely situated in romantic imaginings of the ancient North, in the late 1980s there emerged “a secondary usage” of Nordic identity and iconography by Northern European metal bands (Trafford & Pluskowski 58). Such “Nordicness” laid far more stress on historical context, national identity and notions of ancestry, and, crucially, a sense of extremity and isolation. This emphasis on metal’s extremity beyond the mainstream has long been a crucial component in the marketing of Nordic scenes.Such “extremity” is given mutually supportive value as “authenticity”, where the term is understood as a value judgement (Moore 209) applied by audiences to discern if music remains committed to its own premises (Frith 71). Such questions of sincerity and commitment to metal’s core continue to circulate in the discourses of Nordic extreme metal. Sweden’s death metal underground, for example, was considered at “the forefront of one of the most extreme varieties of music yet conceived” (Moynihan and Søderlind 32), with both the Stockholm and Gothenburg “sounds” proving influential beyond Northern Europe (Kahn-Harris 106).Situating Nordicness as a distinct identity beyond metal’s commercial appeal underscores much of the marketing of Nordic extreme metal to international audiences. Such discourses continue in contemporary contexts–Finland’s official website promotes metal as a form of Finnish art and culture: “By definition, heavy metal fans crave music from outside the mainstream. They champion material that boldly stands out against the normality of pop” (Weaver).The focus on Nordic metal existing “outside” the mainstream is commensurate with understandings of extreme metal as “on the edge of music” (Kahn-Harris 5). Such sentiments are situated in a wider regional narrative that sees the Nordic region at the geographic “edge” of Europe, as remote and isolated (Grimley 2). The apparent isolation that enables the distinctiveness of “Nordic” forms of extreme metal is, however, potentially undercut by the widespread circulation of “Nordicness” as a particular brand.“Nordic extreme metal” can be understood as both a generic and place-based scene, where genre and geography “cross cut and coincide in complex ways” (Kahn-Harris 99). The Bergen black metal sound, for example, much like the Gothenburg death metal sound, is both a geographic and stylistic marker that is replicated in different contexts.This Nordic branding of musical styles is further affirmed by the wider means through which “Nordic”, “Scandinavian” and the “North” become interchangeable frameworks for the marketing of particular styles of extreme metal. “Nordic metal”, Von Helden thus argues, “is a trademark and a best seller” (33).Nordicness as Exclusory Belonging and AncestryMarketing strategies that rely on constructions of Nordic metal as “beyond the mainstream” at once exotify and homogenise the “Nordic”. Sentiments of an “imagined community of Nordicness” (Lucas, Deeks and Spracklen 279) have created problematic boundaries of who, or what, may be represented in such categories.Understandings of “Nordicness” as a site of generic “purity” (Moynihan and Søderlind 32) are therefore both tacitly and explicitly underscored by projections of ethnic purity and “belonging”. As such, where we have previously considered the cultural capital of the “Nordic” as it emerges as a particular branding exercise, here we examine the exclusory impetus of homogenous understandings of the Nordic.Nordicness in this context connotes explicitly racialised value, which interpellates images of Viking heathenry to enable fantasies of the pure, white North. This phenomenon is particularly evident in the context of Norwegian black metal, which bases its own self-mythologising in explicitly Nordic parameters. Norwegian black metal bands and members of the broader scene have often taken steps to continually affirm their Nordicness through various representational strategies. The widespread church burnings associated with the early Norwegian black metal scene, for instance, can be framed as a radical rejection of Christianity and an embracing of Norway’s Viking, pagan past.The ethnoromanticisation of Nordic regions and landscapes is underscored by problematic projections of national belonging. An interest in pagan mythology, as Kahn-Harris notes, can easily become an interest in racism and fascism (41). The “uncritical celebration of pagan pasts, the obsession with the unpolluted countryside and the distrust of the cosmopolitan city” that mark much Norwegian black metal were also common features of early fascist and racist movements (Kahn-Harris 41).Norwegian black metal has thus been able to link the genre, as a global music commodity, to “the conscious revival of myths and ideologies of an ancient northern European history and nationalist culture” (Lucas, Deeks and Spracklen 279). The conscious revival of such myths materialised in the early Norwegian scene in deliberately racist sentiments. Mayhem drummer Jan Axel Blomberg (“Hellhammer”) demonstrates this in his brief declaration that “Black metal is for white people” (in Moynihan and Søderlind 305); similarly, Darkthrone’s original back cover of Transylvanian Hunger (1994) prominently featured the phrase “Norsk Arisk Black Metal” (“Norwegian Aryan Black Metal”). Nordicness as exclusory white, Aryan identity is further mobilised in the National Socialist Black Metal scene, which readily caters to ontological constructions of Nordic whiteness (Spracklen, True Aryan; Hagen).However, Nordicness is also given racialised value in more tacit, but nonetheless troubling ways in wider Nordic folk and Viking metal scenes. The popular association of Vikings with Nordic folk metal has enabled such figures to be dismissed as performative play or camp romanticism, ostensibly removed from the extremity of black metal. Such metal scenes and their appeals to ethnosymbolic patriarchs nevertheless remain central to the ongoing construction of Nordic metal as a site that enables the instrumentality of Northern European whiteness precisely through hiding such whiteness in plain sight (Spracklen, To Holmgard, 359).The ostensibly “camp” performance of bands such as Sweden’s Amon Amarth, Faroese act Týr, or Finland’s Korpiklaani distracts from the ways in which Nordicness, and its realisations through Viking and Pagan symbolism, emerges as a claim to ethnic exclusivity. Through imagining the Viking as an ancestral, genetic category, the “common past” of the Nordic people is constructed as a self-identity apart from other people (Blaagaard 11).Furthermore, the “Viking” itself has cultural capital that has circulated beyond Northern Europe in both inclusive and exclusive ways. Nordic symbolism and mythologies are invoked within the textual aesthetics of heavy metal communities across the globe–there are Viking metal bands in Australia, for instance. Further, the valorising of the “North” in metal discourse draws on the symbols of particular ethnic traditions to give historicity and local meaning to white identity.Lucas, Deeks and Spracklen map the rhetorical power of the “North” in English folk metal. However, the same international flows of Nordic cultural capital that have allowed for the success and distinctiveness of Nordic extreme metal have also enabled the proliferation of increasingly exclusionary practices. A flyer signed by the “Wiking Hordes” in May of 1995 (in Moynihan and Søderlind 327) warns that the expansion of black and death metal into Asia, Eastern Europe and South America posed a threat to the “true Aryan” metal community.Similarly, online discussions of the documentary Pagan Metal, in which an interviewee states that a Brazilian Viking metal band is “a bit funny”, shifted between assertions that enjoyment should not be restricted by cultural heritage and declarations that only Nordic bands could “legitimately” support Viking metal. Giving Nordicness value as a form of insular, ethnic belonging has therefore had exclusory and problematic implications for how metal scenes market their dominant symbols and narratives, particularly as scenes continue to grow and diversify across multiple national contexts.Nordicness as Liberal DemocracyNordicness in heavy metal, as we have argued, has been ascribed cultural capital as both a branded, generic phenomenon and as a marker of ancestral, ethnonational belonging. Understandings of “Nordic” as an exclusory ethnic category marked by strict boundaries however come into conflict with the Nordic region’s self-perceptions as a liberal democracy.We propose an additional iteration for “Nordicness” as a means of pointing to the tensions that emerge between particular metallic imaginings of the “North” as a remote, uncompromising site of pagan liberty, and the material realities of modern Nordic nation states. We consider some new parameters for articulations of “Nordicness” in metal scenes: Nordicness as material and political conditions that have enabled the popularity of heavy metal in the region, and furthermore, the manifestations of such liberal democratic discourses in Nordic extreme metal scenes.Nordicness as a cultural, political brand is based in perceptions of the Nordic countries as “global good citizens”, “peace loving”, “conflict-resolution oriented” and “rational” (Loftsdóttir and Jensen 2). This modern conception of Nordicness is grounded in the region’s current political climate, which took its form in the post-World War II rejection of fascism and the following refugee crisis.Northern Europe’s reputation as a “famously tolerant political community” (Dworkin 487) can therefore be seen, one on hand, as a crucial disconnect from the intolerant North mediated by factions of Nordic extreme metal scenes and on the other, a political community that provides the material conditions which allow extreme metal to flourish. Nordicness here, we argue, is a crucial form of scenic infrastructure–albeit one that has been both celebrated and condemned in the sites and spaces of Nordic extreme metal.The productivity and stability of extreme metal in the Nordic countries has been attributed to a variety of institutional factors: the general relative prosperity of Northern Europe (Terry), Scandinavian legal structures (Maguire 156), universal welfare, high levels of state support for cultural development, and a broad emphasis on musical education in schools.Kahn-Harris argues that the Swedish metal scene is supported by the strength of the Swedish music industry and “Swedish civil society in general” (108). Music education is strongly supported by the state; Sweden’s relatively generous welfare and education system also “provide [an] effective subsidy for music making” (108). Furthermore, he argues that the Swedish scene has benefited from being closer to the “cultural mainstream of the country than is the case in many other countries” (108). Such close relationships to the “cultural mainstream” also invite a critical backlash against the state. The anarchistic anti-government stance of Swedish hardcore bands or the radical individualism of Norwegian black metal embodies this backlash.Early black metal is seen as a targeted response to the “oppressive and numbing social democracy which dominated Norwegian political life” (Moynihan and Søderlind 32). This spurning of social democracy is further articulated by Darkthrone founder Fenriz, who states that black metal “…is every man for himself… It is individualism above all” (True Norwegian Black Metal). Nordic extreme metal’s emphasis on independence and anti-modernity is hence immediately troubled by the material reality of the conditions that allow it to flourish. Nordicness thus gains complex realisation as both radical individualism and democratic infrastructural conditions.In looking towards future directions for expressions of the “Nordic” in extreme metal scenes, we want to consider how Nordicness can be articulated not as exclusory ethnic belonging and individualist misanthropy, but rather illustrate how Nordic scenes have also proffered sites for progressive, anti-racist discourses that speak to the cultural branding of the North as a tolerant political community.Imaginings of the North as ethnically homogenous or pure are complicated by Nordic bands and fans who actively critique such racialised discourses, and instead situate “Nordic” metal as a site of heterogeneity and anti-racist activism. The liberal politics of the region are most clearly articulated in the music of Swedish hardcore and extreme metal bands, particularly those originating in the northern university town of Umeå. Like much of Europe’s underground music scene, Umeå hardcore bands are often aligned with the anti-fascist movement and its message of tolerance and active anti-racist, anti-homophobic and anti-sexist resistance and protest. Refused is the most well-known example, speaking out against capitalism and in favour of animal rights and civil liberties. Scandinavian DIY acts have also long played a crucial role in facilitating the global diffusion of anti-capitalist punk and hardcore music (Haenfler 287).Nonetheless, whilst such acts remain important sites of progressive discourses in homogenous constructions of Nordicness, such an argument for tolerance and diversity is difficult to maintain when the majority of the scene’s successful bands are made up of white, ethnically Scandinavian men. As such, in moving towards future considerations for Nordicness in extreme metal scenes, we thus call into focus a fragmentation of “Nordicness”, precisely to divorce it from homogenous constructions of the “Nordic”, and enable greater critical interrogation and plurality of the notion of the “North” in metal scholarship.ConclusionThis article has pointed towards a multiplicity of Nordic discourses that unfold in metal: Nordic as a marketing tool, Nordic as an ethnic signifier, and Nordic as the political reality of liberal democratic Northern Europe–and the tensions that emerge in their encounters and intersections. In arguing for multiple understandings of “Nordicness” in metal, we contend that the cultural capital that accompanies the “Nordic” actually emerges as a series of fragmented, often conflicting categories.In examining how images of the North as an isolated location at the edge of the world inform the branded construction of Nordic metal as sites of presumed authenticity, we considered how scenes such as Swedish death metal and Norwegian black metal were marketed precisely through their Nordicness, where their geographic isolation from the commercial centre of heavy metal was used to affirm their “Otherness” to their mainstream metal counterparts. This “otherness” has in turn enabled constructions of Nordic metal scenes as sites of not only metallic purity in their isolation from “commercial” metal scenes, but also ethnic homogeneity. Nordicness, in this instance, becomes inscribed with explicitly racialised value that interpellates images of Viking heathenry to bolster phantasmic imaginings of the pure, white North.However, as we argue in the third section, such exclusory narratives of Nordic belonging come into conflict with Northern Europe’s own self image as a site of progressive liberal democracy. We argue that Nordicness here can be taken as a political imperative towards socialist democracy, wherein such conditions have enabled the widespread viability of extreme metal; yet also invited critical backlashes against the modern political state.Ultimately, in responding to our own research question–what is the cultural capital of “Nordicness” in metal?–we assert that such capital is realised in multiple iterations, undermining any possibility of a uniform category of “Nordicness”, and exposing its political tensions and paradoxes. 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