Predicting the effect of climate change on community structure and function: an assessment using temperate grassland invertebrates. This research will set the future agenda for assessing community responses to climate change worldwide. Our findings will be a robust template for future research to incorporate sophisticated multi-species assessments across all taxa and biomes. Results and conclusions from this research will aid graziers, agronomists, government agencies and conservation groups wor ....Predicting the effect of climate change on community structure and function: an assessment using temperate grassland invertebrates. This research will set the future agenda for assessing community responses to climate change worldwide. Our findings will be a robust template for future research to incorporate sophisticated multi-species assessments across all taxa and biomes. Results and conclusions from this research will aid graziers, agronomists, government agencies and conservation groups working in urban, rural and regional landscapes to prepare for changes in species relationships over the coming century. The team of early career researchers will also prepare the next generation of scientists for cutting edge ecological and statistical research within a dynamic and multidisciplinary context.Read moreRead less
Using Advances in Bayesian Statistics to Estimate Australian Rainfall Variations in a Climate Change World. Modelling changes to rainfall patterns answers many important questions about changes in Australia's climate. This is essential to protecting our biodiversity and ensuring Australia's environmental sustainability. The project will address such issues as the extent to which the entire distribution of daily rainfall has changed over time, which areas of Australia have been most affected by t ....Using Advances in Bayesian Statistics to Estimate Australian Rainfall Variations in a Climate Change World. Modelling changes to rainfall patterns answers many important questions about changes in Australia's climate. This is essential to protecting our biodiversity and ensuring Australia's environmental sustainability. The project will address such issues as the extent to which the entire distribution of daily rainfall has changed over time, which areas of Australia have been most affected by this change and to what extent are these changes related to global climate indices. The latest advances in Bayesian statistics will be used to introduce flexibility and complexity into the model.Read moreRead less
Improving Projections of Regional Climate Change for Australia Using Detection and Attribution Studies. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in 2001 that "most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" and that "anthropogenic climate change will persist for many centuries". This project will reduce uncertainties in projections of future climate change for Australia. We will compare model-simulate ....Improving Projections of Regional Climate Change for Australia Using Detection and Attribution Studies. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in 2001 that "most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" and that "anthropogenic climate change will persist for many centuries". This project will reduce uncertainties in projections of future climate change for Australia. We will compare model-simulated climate changes during the twentieth century with observed changes globally and in the Australian region. These comparisons will be used with statistical modelling to estimate probability distributions for future changes in Australian climate.Read moreRead less
Advances in statistical methods for analysing high dimensional count data. This project will lay the methodological foundations for future studies of ecological communities world-wide: whether studying biodiversity; monitoring and testing for an environmental impact of human activities (such as mining or pollution); studying drivers of ecosystem change such as land use, feral animals or climate change. This project will develop and make available new analysis methods that are more readily interp ....Advances in statistical methods for analysing high dimensional count data. This project will lay the methodological foundations for future studies of ecological communities world-wide: whether studying biodiversity; monitoring and testing for an environmental impact of human activities (such as mining or pollution); studying drivers of ecosystem change such as land use, feral animals or climate change. This project will develop and make available new analysis methods that are more readily interpreted, more powerful and more flexible, and that enable the study of some research questions which are difficult or impossible to answer using current methods (e.g. understanding higher-order interactions at the community level). Future biostatisticians will be trained, partly addressing our critical national shortage.Read moreRead less