Purnululu National Park

The World Heritage Listed area for Purnululu National Park is regarding 2,400km2. Purnululu National Park is located 300 kilometres by road south of the nearest population centre, the little regional town of Kununurra.

There is an adjacent-door buffer zone to the north and west (the Purnululu Conservation Reserve) of nearly 800 km2, which is not portion of the nominated area but which is managed to avowal guard the park's World Heritage Values. Famous for the 450 km2 Bungle Bungle Range, Purnululu has been listed as an outstanding landscape that is an incomparable natural phenomenon. It reveals the checking account of its formation on peak of hundreds of millions of years, and helps unlock the insert of the earth's records.

Twenty million years of weathering have produced the eroded sandstone towers and banded beehive structures of the Bungle Bungle Range. Dark bands, formed by cyanobacteria, winding horizontally on the subject of the domes, contrast following the lighter ocher sandstone. Cyanobacteria are single-celled organisms that represent some of the oldest vivaciousness-forms nearly earth. These organisms have been found as fossils in rocks elsewhere in Western Australia in rocks that are believed to be taking place to 3500 million years old-fashioned. The cyanobacterial bands are happening to several metres broad, yet lonely a few millimetres thick. The crusts dispel stabilise and protect the ancient and fragile sandstone towers. The dramatically sculptured structures undergo remarkable seasonal variation in sky, including striking colour transition in imitation of rain. The intricate maze of towers is accentuated by sinuous, narrow, sheer-sided gorges lined as soon as majestic Livistona adherent palms. These, and the soaring cliffs taking place to 250 metres high, are clip by seasonal waterfalls and pools, creating the major tourist attractions in the park.

The sandstone karst of Purnululu is of satisfying scientific importance in demonstrating thus therefore the process of cone karst formation upon sandstone - a phenomenon on your own recognised by geomorphologists again the postscript 25 years and still not chosen understood. While sandstone towers and cliffs are known from new parts of the world, including some regions in Australia, the spectacular features of the Bungle Bungle Range are unrivalled in their scale, extend, grandeur and diversity of forms. They owe their existence and uniqueness to several interacting geological, biological, erosional and climatic phenomena.

The park's domes, gorges and damp season waterfalls were regarding unsigned to the outside world until 1982 subsequent to aerial pictures of this outback jewel were released. Purnululu National Park lies in a transition zone along in the middle of the arid desert environments of central Australia to the south and, to the north, the monsoon savannah environments of northern Australia. The biological features of the park do its stuff adaptations to the aridity of the neighbouring desert environments and in addition to to the rainfall-affluent zone of the monsoon region. The Ord River, the major watercourse, creates a riverine ecosystem that is a vital resource for natural world, animals and people. Mean annual rainfall is very about 600 mm but the evaporation rate is totally high, and runoff is unexpected. Consequently, there is tiny enduring surface water. The diversity of landforms, along taking into consideration the park's location in a transitional climatic zone, supports a range of well-disposed vegetation communities, ranging from desert shrubs along the exposed plateaus of the Bungle Bungle Range, to the rainforest communities along Osmond Creek valley.

The Western Australian Government Department of Environment and Conservation is responsible for day-to-hours of daylight admin of the property, through the Purnululu Park Council in conjunction considering local Aboriginal people.