Has Twentieth Century warming changed southeastern Australia's fire regimes? This project will reconstruct extreme fire seasons and fire events for the past 500 years in three temperate regions of southeastern Australia. This baseline information will extend our historic records of fire, quantify the controls on fire in our landscapes and place recent catastrophic fire events in historical context.
Remote forcing of Pacific Ocean variability and impacts on global climate. Variability in the Pacific Ocean has a profound impact on global climate. Recent unprecedented decadal variability in the Pacific has been linked to global temperature trends and extremes, yet little is known about what drives this variability or its impact on regional climate. This project will combine observations, advanced coupled climate models and ocean-atmosphere dynamical theory to quantify remote drivers of Pacifi ....Remote forcing of Pacific Ocean variability and impacts on global climate. Variability in the Pacific Ocean has a profound impact on global climate. Recent unprecedented decadal variability in the Pacific has been linked to global temperature trends and extremes, yet little is known about what drives this variability or its impact on regional climate. This project will combine observations, advanced coupled climate models and ocean-atmosphere dynamical theory to quantify remote drivers of Pacific Ocean variability on interannual-decadal time-scales. This project aims to enhance our understanding of the modes of variability operating in this region and their impact on global and Australian climate. This will have significant benefits for the many sectors of society reliant on interseasonal-decadal climate prediction.Read moreRead less
Predicting adaptive responses to climate change in Australian native bees. This project aims to understand how insects will adapt to climate change by examining a largely overlooked but economically important group of species: Australian native bees. Native bees are important pollinators of both crops and native plants, but their sensitivity to changes in climate are unknown. Expected outcomes include new knowledge of the resilience of native bees to climate change, and new effective tools for p ....Predicting adaptive responses to climate change in Australian native bees. This project aims to understand how insects will adapt to climate change by examining a largely overlooked but economically important group of species: Australian native bees. Native bees are important pollinators of both crops and native plants, but their sensitivity to changes in climate are unknown. Expected outcomes include new knowledge of the resilience of native bees to climate change, and new effective tools for predicting climate change resilience that can be applied to many species. The intended benefits include increasing our understanding of the potential for native bees to act as future pollinators in Australia’s natural and agro-ecosystems, and guide policy and management decisions to better protect and conserve our bee fauna.Read moreRead less
Integrating remote sensing, landscape flux measurements, and phenology to understand the impacts of climate change on Australian landscapes. This project aims to combine satellite data with field tower measurements to more accurately map the water and carbon status of Australian landscapes. This will provide valuable information on land surface changes and improve model predictions of water balance, productivity, and health in response to climate change and land use impacts.
Quantifying sea-level trends and extremes along Australia's coastal margin. Multi-decadal changes in sea-level, and sea-level extremes, cannot be well quantified along most global coastlines, including Australia's, because the high spatial variability of sea-level is under-sampled by the sparse set of long, high quality tide gauge records. Satellite altimetry provides an alternative data source with greater spatial sampling, yet experiences contamination from land within tens of kilometres from ....Quantifying sea-level trends and extremes along Australia's coastal margin. Multi-decadal changes in sea-level, and sea-level extremes, cannot be well quantified along most global coastlines, including Australia's, because the high spatial variability of sea-level is under-sampled by the sparse set of long, high quality tide gauge records. Satellite altimetry provides an alternative data source with greater spatial sampling, yet experiences contamination from land within tens of kilometres from the coast and also suffers from regionally correlated biases. This project proposes to address these problems through re-tracking radar altimetry waveforms to derive new data in the coastal margin, enabling the production of new inferences on sea-level change and extremes at dramatically improved spatial resolution around Australia.Read moreRead less
Understanding leaf water isotope composition. This project aims to quantify variation in leaf water isotopes and develop mechanistic models for paleoclimatologists and plant scientists to constrain global carbon cycles. Leaf water stable isotopes influence the isotope compositions of atmospheric oxygen, carbon dioxide and water vapour, and impart an evaporative signal on the isotope composition of plant organic material. These isotope signals have been used to constrain global carbon and water c ....Understanding leaf water isotope composition. This project aims to quantify variation in leaf water isotopes and develop mechanistic models for paleoclimatologists and plant scientists to constrain global carbon cycles. Leaf water stable isotopes influence the isotope compositions of atmospheric oxygen, carbon dioxide and water vapour, and impart an evaporative signal on the isotope composition of plant organic material. These isotope signals have been used to constrain global carbon and water cycles and reconstruct past climates. This project aims to quantify variation in leaf water isotopes and develop mechanistic models for use by paleoclimatologists, plant scientists and to constrain global carbon cycles and develop accurate models of leaf water isotopes to reduce uncertainty in climate models.Read moreRead less
Adaptive capacity of marine invertebrates in a climate change ocean. As the oceans simultaneously warm and acidify, prospects for marine biota are of concern. This project aims to determine the potential for phenotypic adjustment and evolutionary adaptation. To discern the roles of phenotype and genotype in marine invertebrate stress tolerance this project endeavours to use selection experiments, long-term rearing and quantitative genetics . A focus on vulnerable calcification systems could dete ....Adaptive capacity of marine invertebrates in a climate change ocean. As the oceans simultaneously warm and acidify, prospects for marine biota are of concern. This project aims to determine the potential for phenotypic adjustment and evolutionary adaptation. To discern the roles of phenotype and genotype in marine invertebrate stress tolerance this project endeavours to use selection experiments, long-term rearing and quantitative genetics . A focus on vulnerable calcification systems could determine genetic mechanisms underlying impaired growth. Investigation of species from the east Australia latitudinal thermal gradient, a global change hot spot could generate insights into biological responses and adaptive potential in a changing ocean and on time scales relevant to resource managers to understand the challenges faced by marine biota.Read moreRead less
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.
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
Drought-induced mortality in arid-zone tree species: a mechanistic study. This project aims to determine the relative importance of elevated temperature and increased vapour pressure deficit during drought in causing drought induced mortality (DIM). The outcomes of this project will be an enhanced ability to predict future mortality in response to a warmer and atmospherically drier climate. This will benefit the development of future management strategies and our ability to predict drought impac ....Drought-induced mortality in arid-zone tree species: a mechanistic study. This project aims to determine the relative importance of elevated temperature and increased vapour pressure deficit during drought in causing drought induced mortality (DIM). The outcomes of this project will be an enhanced ability to predict future mortality in response to a warmer and atmospherically drier climate. This will benefit the development of future management strategies and our ability to predict drought impacts on landscape function and productivity.Read moreRead less