Producing Biodiversity: A History of Science in Australia's Desert Lands. Biodiversity conservation is regarded by most people as desirable, but its historical and cultural aspects are poorly understood. It is not just about scientific understanding of animals and plants, but also a matter of practice and negotiation. People and places are changed through conservation and these changes in turn shape the ways nature is imagined and managed. Producing Biodiversity documents historical and contempo ....Producing Biodiversity: A History of Science in Australia's Desert Lands. Biodiversity conservation is regarded by most people as desirable, but its historical and cultural aspects are poorly understood. It is not just about scientific understanding of animals and plants, but also a matter of practice and negotiation. People and places are changed through conservation and these changes in turn shape the ways nature is imagined and managed. Producing Biodiversity documents historical and contemporary initiatives in biodiversity management on six very different pastoral properties on the margins of the Australian desert. We provide a long-term perspective on national and local conservation imperatives in different eras, and explore how they affect pastoral, Aboriginal and scientific communities.Read moreRead less
Seeing the good from the trees: remotely sensing the urban forest. Urban forests provide a range of ecosystem services including temperature regulation and rainfall capture, but measuring these benefits is currently prohibitively costly and inaccurate. This project aims to develop a new model of urban forest ecosystem services that uses remotely sensed three dimensional data to map canopy cover. A model using this data, which is being collected by an increasing number of governments, represents ....Seeing the good from the trees: remotely sensing the urban forest. Urban forests provide a range of ecosystem services including temperature regulation and rainfall capture, but measuring these benefits is currently prohibitively costly and inaccurate. This project aims to develop a new model of urban forest ecosystem services that uses remotely sensed three dimensional data to map canopy cover. A model using this data, which is being collected by an increasing number of governments, represents a novel advance on the established methodology that requires expensive and time-consuming fieldwork. The advancements expected to be made in this project will mean that environmental planners will be able to better plan the urban forest so that cities are more liveable and resilient in the face of climate change.Read moreRead less
Assessing soil formation and erosion balances in the Top End with an expanded toolkit. This work is timely as it will provide the tools and the data to assess the sustainability with regard to soil loss of potential agricultural development in the Top End of Australia. With food-growing areas in southern Australia under stress from a prolonged drought, the Federal Government has established a Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce to explore the potential of the Top End for agricultural and ....Assessing soil formation and erosion balances in the Top End with an expanded toolkit. This work is timely as it will provide the tools and the data to assess the sustainability with regard to soil loss of potential agricultural development in the Top End of Australia. With food-growing areas in southern Australia under stress from a prolonged drought, the Federal Government has established a Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce to explore the potential of the Top End for agricultural and other development. A key component of its brief is that development must be sustainable. The economic consequences of increased agriculture in the North are likely to be profound, and the findings of this research will be crucial to success.Read moreRead less
Developing new techniques for mapping soil loss and movement in Australia. Soil erosion is a major problem for Australia. This project will develop and test a new and sensitive method to quantify soil loss and measure soil erosion and transport, using cutting-edge technologies conceived and developed in Australia.
Production and transport of soil and sediments, determined by cosmogenic radionuclides and noble gases. Basic questions concerning Australia's soil and regolith resources are addressed through measurement of nuclides produced by cosmic rays in near-surface minerals. Cosmogenic Be-10, Ne-21 and Al-26 are used to (i) quantify the sustainable levels of soil loss, (ii) assess long-term mixing rates, (iii) quantify dispersion and flux of regolith materials from hill-slopes to rivers, and (iv) determi ....Production and transport of soil and sediments, determined by cosmogenic radionuclides and noble gases. Basic questions concerning Australia's soil and regolith resources are addressed through measurement of nuclides produced by cosmic rays in near-surface minerals. Cosmogenic Be-10, Ne-21 and Al-26 are used to (i) quantify the sustainable levels of soil loss, (ii) assess long-term mixing rates, (iii) quantify dispersion and flux of regolith materials from hill-slopes to rivers, and (iv) determine the rates of sediment movement through Australian rivers and floodplains, including sediment-adsorbed pollutants. The research has strong implications for the usage and conservation of soil, sediments and weathered deposits for agriculture, mineral resources, and sedimentary waste disposal.Read moreRead less
Change ecology - gaining broad-scale, timely biodiversity knowledge in a time of uncertainty. Australians are confronted daily with the consequences of changes wrought by human over-exploitation of natural resources. Our capacity to track and respond to change is very limited and slow. Thus, rapid deterioration of ecologically important aspects is detected late and is not reflective of the general state because knowledge is derived from small-scale measurements that are difficult to generalize. ....Change ecology - gaining broad-scale, timely biodiversity knowledge in a time of uncertainty. Australians are confronted daily with the consequences of changes wrought by human over-exploitation of natural resources. Our capacity to track and respond to change is very limited and slow. Thus, rapid deterioration of ecologically important aspects is detected late and is not reflective of the general state because knowledge is derived from small-scale measurements that are difficult to generalize. We will build a capacity for providing large-scale knowledge of vegetation condition and flow-on effects on biodiversity, which also will allow us to make informed assessments of the ecological consequences of some existing (climate change, drying) and imminent (biofuel plantings) drivers of change.Read moreRead less
Stable isotopes in marsupials: reconstruction of environmental change in Australia. This project will establish the application of stable isotope analysis of marsupial bones for the reconstruction of past environments, a key area to advance Australian prehistory. On a continental scale, it will establish the relationship between stable isotopes (C, O, N) in bones and environmental factors (e.g., plant distribution, humidity, temperature); on a local scale, the relationship between stable isotope ....Stable isotopes in marsupials: reconstruction of environmental change in Australia. This project will establish the application of stable isotope analysis of marsupial bones for the reconstruction of past environments, a key area to advance Australian prehistory. On a continental scale, it will establish the relationship between stable isotopes (C, O, N) in bones and environmental factors (e.g., plant distribution, humidity, temperature); on a local scale, the relationship between stable isotopes and aboriginal land management. The project will provide a late Quaternary environmental reconstruction along a transect from the coastal regions in South Australia into the Lake Eyre Basin and explore the methodological limitations at sites with long fossil records.Read moreRead less
Exposure dating with manganese-53, neon-21 and beryllium-10: a new toolkit for studying long-term landscape evolution. Australia today is the driest inhabited continent but this was not always the case. Tens of millions of years ago the climate of Australia was considerably wetter. Then, several million years ago, aridity in Australia developed producing most of the desert features of the red Centre that we see today. The age of our deserts and other arid features are not, however, well known. T ....Exposure dating with manganese-53, neon-21 and beryllium-10: a new toolkit for studying long-term landscape evolution. Australia today is the driest inhabited continent but this was not always the case. Tens of millions of years ago the climate of Australia was considerably wetter. Then, several million years ago, aridity in Australia developed producing most of the desert features of the red Centre that we see today. The age of our deserts and other arid features are not, however, well known. This project will determine the age of desertification in Australia, thereby enhancing our understanding of such processes and the response of our landscape to changing climate.
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Reconstructing landscapes for biodiversity: From predictive modelling to future scenarios. Many landscapes around the world have been effectively denuded of natural vegetation, causing precipitous declines in native biodiversity. Mitigation of such effects in the near/medium-term future requires substantial ecological advice. We will employ our skills developed in modelling distributions of species across landscapes based on terrain, soils and climate to assess alternative landscape-reconstructi ....Reconstructing landscapes for biodiversity: From predictive modelling to future scenarios. Many landscapes around the world have been effectively denuded of natural vegetation, causing precipitous declines in native biodiversity. Mitigation of such effects in the near/medium-term future requires substantial ecological advice. We will employ our skills developed in modelling distributions of species across landscapes based on terrain, soils and climate to assess alternative landscape-reconstruction scenarios. This links use of existing data sets for initial modelling, a validation phase for testing model reliability and for refining models, and a subsequent GIS-based modelling phase in which alternative options for reconstructing landscapes are evaluated for their effectiveness in sustaining landscape-scale native biodiversity.Read moreRead less
THE CORAL RECORD OF ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS IN THE GREAT BARRIER REEF:QUANTIFICATION OF ANTHROPOGENIC FLUXES. The objective of this proposal is to quantify the environmental impacts of enhanced terrestrial fluxes and climate change on the coral reefs in the Great Barrier Reef. This will be achieved by using an integrated approach based on coral proxy records of river plumes and sea surface temperatures that are preserved in carbonate skeletons of the long-lived (200-400 year old) Porites coral. ....THE CORAL RECORD OF ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS IN THE GREAT BARRIER REEF:QUANTIFICATION OF ANTHROPOGENIC FLUXES. The objective of this proposal is to quantify the environmental impacts of enhanced terrestrial fluxes and climate change on the coral reefs in the Great Barrier Reef. This will be achieved by using an integrated approach based on coral proxy records of river plumes and sea surface temperatures that are preserved in carbonate skeletons of the long-lived (200-400 year old) Porites coral. This will be integrated with monitoring and process studies of river flood plumes and coral reefs and provide a scientific basis to ensure the long-term sustainability of the GBR.Read moreRead less