Variability in El Niño frequency and intensity over the past 4000 years. Fossil corals contain a rich archive of past climate variability for tropical oceans which can extend the limited instrumental data and increase our understanding of climate sensitivity. El Niño variations in the Pacific have far-reaching impacts on Australian climate, and this project will reconstruct variations in the past in order to better forecast climate sensitivity in the future. It focuses on Christmas Island whic ....Variability in El Niño frequency and intensity over the past 4000 years. Fossil corals contain a rich archive of past climate variability for tropical oceans which can extend the limited instrumental data and increase our understanding of climate sensitivity. El Niño variations in the Pacific have far-reaching impacts on Australian climate, and this project will reconstruct variations in the past in order to better forecast climate sensitivity in the future. It focuses on Christmas Island which is the optimal site to capture El Niño variability at several different time scales, and will lead to a better understanding of atmospheric and oceanic factors that have caused climate variability.Read moreRead less
Metabolite pools and their implications for plant responses to global change. Australian landscape management faces significant challenges from existing land practices and the effects of climate change. Effective management and targeted remediation requires an understanding of the processes that drive ecosystem function. The development of broadly applicable tools for the monitoring of plant and ecosystem health is therefore of considerable interest. Flexibility in core processes of plant functi ....Metabolite pools and their implications for plant responses to global change. Australian landscape management faces significant challenges from existing land practices and the effects of climate change. Effective management and targeted remediation requires an understanding of the processes that drive ecosystem function. The development of broadly applicable tools for the monitoring of plant and ecosystem health is therefore of considerable interest. Flexibility in core processes of plant function represents a significant opportunity to develop such tools. With a focus on plant metabolites, this project will characterise how Australian trees alter the allocation of resources to cope with environmental changes and produce metabolite-based selective traits for stress tolerance in Australian trees. Read moreRead less
Where will species go? Revolutionising projections of species distributions with climate change. Improving our capacity to predict climate change impacts on biodiversity is a National Research Priority and a priority under the National Biodiversity and Climate Change Action Plan (2004-2007). Our research will revolutionise the field of bioclimatic modelling by enabling the probability of losses/gains in species distributions to be calculated. This will enable policy makers to identify vulnerable ....Where will species go? Revolutionising projections of species distributions with climate change. Improving our capacity to predict climate change impacts on biodiversity is a National Research Priority and a priority under the National Biodiversity and Climate Change Action Plan (2004-2007). Our research will revolutionise the field of bioclimatic modelling by enabling the probability of losses/gains in species distributions to be calculated. This will enable policy makers to identify vulnerable species and provides a strong framework for prioritizing areas for research and monitoring. Our research will interface two disciplines, earth and biological sciences, and establish a new international collaboration that will ensure Australia is at the forefront of a rapidly developing research field. Read moreRead less
Brown is the new green: grassland responses to drought and heat. This project aims to improve accuracy and precision in predicting the impact of water availability and heat stress on grassland function. Grassland ecosystems are important reservoirs of global biodiversity and carbon storage. Grasslands are highly sensitive to drought and heat stress, but studies recently showed that current grassland models cannot predict these responses because they do not adequately represent the key processes ....Brown is the new green: grassland responses to drought and heat. This project aims to improve accuracy and precision in predicting the impact of water availability and heat stress on grassland function. Grassland ecosystems are important reservoirs of global biodiversity and carbon storage. Grasslands are highly sensitive to drought and heat stress, but studies recently showed that current grassland models cannot predict these responses because they do not adequately represent the key processes of physiological drought tolerance, leaf browning, and species traits. This project will collect targeted data sets in order to develop and test model representations of these key processes. This will provide significant benefits, such as greatly increasing capacity to predict the impact of drought and heat stress on grasslands, at scales ranging from field to globe.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE120102580
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
Water and carbon stable isotope exchange between the biosphere and atmosphere. Understanding how climatic factors affect ecosystem carbon dioxide and water fluxes is essential for better climate models and managements strategies. This project will use novel isotope laser spectroscopy to measure the oxygen isotope of transpired water and that of the atmosphere to examine carbon dioxide and water at both the leaf and ecosystem scale.
Climate-related regime shifts in inland semi-arid ecosystems through ecohydrological proxies. This project will investigate the dynamics of climate, especially rainfall, of the northwest of Australia over the last few thousand years. Our findings will increase understanding of climate variability and contribute to sustainable management of water and biodiversity in semi-arid Australia.
Impact of climate change stressors on calcifying and non-calcifying marine life stages: predicting tipping points for persistence in a changing ocean. Australia generates considerable prosperity from its oceans with marine invertebrate resources playing a key role. These resources are at risk due to climate change. This project will study early life stages of key marine species to determine sensitivities to ocean warming and acidification and inform assessment of risk in a changing ocean.
Australian savannah landscapes: past, present and future. Australian savannahs are productive and culturally and biologically significant landscapes but are vulnerable to climate change. The project will determine savannah function (carbon and water balance) for the present and assess how sensitive they have been to past climate variability. The project will then address how they may respond to future climate change.
Mapping Antarctic climate change in space and time using mosses as biological proxies. This project will use polar mosses as sentinels for climate change to determine the extent to which change is already affecting Antarctica and enable development of more robust global climate models. Novel remote sensing methods will be developed to identify biodiversity most at risk from climate change thus maintaining Antarctic treaty obligations.
Coastal tropicalisation – adapting to novel ecosystems and trajectories. This project aims to quantify the impacts of a changing climate on key ecosystem functions of temperate reefs. As global temperate reefs respond to ocean warming, iconic and economically important kelp forests and associated fishes and invertebrates are being lost. Novel communities and never-before seen configurations of species are emerging in these systems. This project aims to characterise the new dynamics of these nove ....Coastal tropicalisation – adapting to novel ecosystems and trajectories. This project aims to quantify the impacts of a changing climate on key ecosystem functions of temperate reefs. As global temperate reefs respond to ocean warming, iconic and economically important kelp forests and associated fishes and invertebrates are being lost. Novel communities and never-before seen configurations of species are emerging in these systems. This project aims to characterise the new dynamics of these novel systems, and provide an understanding of how to maintain key ecosystem functions - primary productivity, fish production - that underpin the benefits that humans derive from our coastlines.Read moreRead less