Friday 14th December 11.00am
Eliciting mental models about water management from key stakeholders in the Crocodile River Catchment, South Africa
Samantha Stone-Jovicich
Friday 30th November – 11.00am
Influence of source and scale of digital elevation models on hydrological and erosion modelling
Anne Henderson
Seminar Summary:
Slope is a major determining factor in the estimation of hillslope erosion rates. This seminar discusses the performance of two whole-of-catchment digital elevation model (DEM) products - Shuttle Radar (SRTM) and an interpolated DEM based on best available mapping and a very commonly used interpolation routine (ANUDEM) - in terms of their ability to accurately represent slope in erosion estimates for catchment water quality modelling for the Burdekin. I examine the performance of the two DEMs for a 400km2 study area, Blue Range, by comparing them with a Reference DEM's derived from high resolution elevation data. For alluvial areas, the SRTM over-predicts slope by 24% due to amplification of noise. The NRW interpolated grid appears to better predict the reference DEM slope distribution and mean value, but spatial comparisons revealed a surprisingly poor match. For hilly high relief terrain (slopes >= 0.05), both DEMs perform well. For low relief terrain (i.e. non-alluvial, but < 0.05 slope) the SRTM performs well. In contrast, the interpolated grid strongly under predicts slope (by 24%) in low relief areas. Spatial comparisons reveal a pattern relating to the geometry and spacing of the contours. Impact of erosion from low relief terrain on overall hillslope erosion in Blue Range suggests that this terrain type contributes over 50% of the total eroded material. As similar proportions of low relief terrain with similar cover levels to Blue Range occur throughout the Burdekin, the potential for the choice of DEM to influence sediment and nutrient model parameterisation (such as erosion estimation in SedNet) at catchment scale should not be ignored. The talk concludes with an analysis of impact of hilllslope erosion estimates using the different DEMs on overall sediment load predictions at end of catchment, based on the latest SedNet model.
About the Speaker
Anne joined CSIRO Land and Water at Davies Lab in Townsville in 1998 as a spatial analyst and modeller. She is part of the research stream Water Quality and Environmental Flows which is part of the Rivers and Estuaries Theme. Anne is currently involved in research into sediment and nutrient transport modelling, particularly as it impacts on water quality. Prior to commencing her current positions with Land and Water, Anne worked as a exploration geologist, a research officer with CSIRO Exploration and Mining specialising in geological remote sensing, and as a consultant for a private terrain analysis and remote sensing firm.
Wednesday 28th November – 2.00pm
Aquaculture Development and Opportunitiy in North Queensland
Margaret Conway, Steven Boyd, Brendan Furey
Note location change: Meeting room 2
Seminar Summary:
The Palm Island indigenous community is undertaking a very important step forward by providing a pathway to culturally-sensitive economic development of community-based sustainable enterprise development in the island.
The Palm Island Sponges Aquaculture Project is a collaboration between the Palm Island-based Indigenous project proponent, Coolgaree CDEP, the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), on whose research the project is based and the Townsville Office of the Department of Tourism, Regional Development and Industry (DTRDI), which provides project management and business support services. Extensive background work has been completed on the project to date including; market assessments and product analysis, computerised farm production modelling, business modelling and business planning, extensive in-situ, project-specific scientific research, the development and documentation of farm technology, the negotiation of an Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) with Traditional Owners securing access to land and seabed, the identification of legal structures for the new entities and the commencement of formal training and skills transfer.
Friday 23rd November – 11.00am
Development of a new sugarcane cropping system
Alan Garside
Seminar Summary:
The seminar will largely cover the research and development carried out over the last 14 years (1993 – 2007) by the Sugar Yield Decline Joint Venture (SYDJV). The SYDJV was established in 1993 as a multi-organisational (BSES, CSIRO Soils, SRDC), multi-disciplinary program to investigate why the Australian sugar industry was on a productivity plateau (suffering yield decline) for the past 20 years. Previous research by BSES had indicated that root diseases were closely associated with the problem and if they could be identified and resistant varieties bred the issue would be overcome. However, an intensive program of screening for root pathogens and breeding resistant varieties did not overcome the problem.
There was little doubt that root pathogens were involved but questions were being asked as to whether they were the cause of the problem or an effect of a whole range of factors being out of balance in how sugarcane was being grown. The SYDJV decided there was a real need to question the way the crop was being produced in an intensive monoculture, with serious soil compaction associated with indiscriminate traffic of heavy vehicles and excessive tillage (in large part to remove compaction).
The outcome of research demonstrating the importance of these issues is discussed. The research outcomes resulted in a changed sugarcane cropping system based on legume breaks to the monoculture, controlled traffic and minimum tillage. The new system, or at least components of it, are now being widely adopted by the industry. The seminar will cover the R & D work that under-pinned the development of the new system and will touch on issues that need to be addressed by R & D in the future.
Friday 9th November – 11.00am
Graziers helping tests of human behaviour changes
Ally Lankester
Seminar Summary
Human and ecological systems are experiencing increasingly complex environmental problems largely driven by human activity. Changes to human behaviour will, therefore, be required to address these problems.
This seminar is based on a research project aimed at increasing our understanding of individual behaviour change by developing a conceptual framework. The framework will be tested on graziers in the tropical rangelands of North Queensland, Australia, by examining their decision making process in deciding whether or not to change to more sustainable natural resource management practices. Understanding the decision making stages that landholders go through, the reasoning that occurs within each of these stages and the influence of trust, identity and sense of place on this process may contribute novel insights to natural resource management and how best to accelerate the rate at which sustainable practices might be adopted.
About the Speaker
Before joining CSIRO as a PhD student in May 2007 Ally was employed by the Australian Centre for Tropical Freshwater Research at James Cook University to undertake social research on four projects in North Queensland. Two projects worked with River Consultingto design incentives to achieve biodiversity conservation and water quality improvements in the Burdekin River Catchment. Another project worked with the Tropical Savannas to identify landholder experiences and perceptions in regard to woody vegetation change in the Northern Gulf. The final project involved eliciting environmental values for estuarine and coastal areas of the Lower Burdekin region for the Coastal catchment Initiative of the Burdekin Dry tropics NRM group. Prior to these projects she completed her Masters research project whichinvestigated the social dimensions to riparian management in the Dalrymple Shire of the Burdekin River Catchment.
Tuesday 30th October – 11.00am
An alternative steady state introduced by herbivory: the role of hydrology in state resilience
Prof. Tom Hobbs, Head of the Department of Forest, Rangeland and Watershed Stewardship at Colorado State University
Seminar Summary
Based on the work being done in Yellowstone on elk-beaver-willow-wolf interactions. A story with a really engaging conceptual model backed by data--experimental plot-level studies, landscape level observations, carbon dating. Interplay of water and herbivory in shaping rangeland landscape composition and biological diversity.
Monday 29th October – 11.00am
Coping with complexity in ecology and resource management: the promise of hierarchical Bayes
Prof. Tom Hobbs, Head of the Department of Forest, Rangeland and Watershed Stewardship at Colorado State University
Seminar Summary
A seminar to introduce people to the general concepts of hierarchical Bayesian modeling and its potential for dealing with complexity in ecological models and their relationship to data.
Prof. Hobbs will give a intuitive, heuristic grasp of hierarchical Bayes and offer some suggestions for how to go about self-teaching.
About the Speaker
Tom Hobbs is Head of the Department of Forest, Rangeland, and Watershed Stewardship at Colorado State University. His broad academic interests include the roles of large herbivores in ecosystems. Virtually all of his work links ecological modeling to empirical studies in the field and laboratory. Dr. Hobbs earned his MS and Ph.D. in Wildlife Biology at Colorado State University.
He has served NEON as Chair of the Fundamental Sentinel Unit tiger team. The group focused on the observations of responses of biodiversity and ecosystems to climate and environmental change. The team worked to understand the uncertainty associated with each data product generated by an FSU measurement, to generate the data products, and to sketch the algorithms needed to produce them.
Monday 8th October – 11.00am
Setting climate change targets to protect the Great Barrier Reef
Chris McGrath, Barrister-at-Law
Seminar Summary
This seminar addresses what policy targets should be set to avoid severe impacts to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) from climate change. The evidence of climate change and current knowledge of likely impacts to the GBR are reviewed, particularly the major coral bleaching events in 1998 and 2002. The key conclusions drawn are:
- setting policy targets of stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases and aerosols at 450-550 ppm carbon dioxide equivalents to limit increases in mean global temperatures to 2-3°C over pre-industrial levels are likely to be too high to avoid severe impacts of coral bleaching to the GBR.
- stabilising greenhouse gases around year 2000 levels, of 370 ppm carbon dioxide equivalents, or preferably 350 ppm, and allowing a rise in mean global temperature of 1°C, appear to be the highest targets that should be set if the GBR is to be protected from serious degradation.
- current policies are far from achieving or even setting these objectives and, consequently, severe impacts to the GBR are likely in coming decades. This topic is of critical importance for the growing debate in Australian federal politics on climate change policy and establishing an emissions trading scheme for greenhouse gases.
The seminar is based on PhD research available at http://www.envlaw.com.au/phd.pdf
Friday 5th October – 11.00am
Tree Crop Research in PNG and the SW Pacific
Mike Webb
Seminar Summary
This seminar will show various aspects of tree crop research in the PNG and the south western Pacific – with the major emphasis on nutrition of oil palm in PNG and cabinet timbers in other Pacific Island countries. The research covered will range from behaviour of nutrients (Mg and K) on volcanic ash soils to nutrient budgets for a Eucalyptus deglupta plantation in the Solomon Islands.
Wednesday 19th September – 11.00am
Thresholds in rangelands: the scales of social-biophysical interactions
Dr Brandon Bestelmeyer, Visiting Scientist from the USDA, where he works on the Jornada Long Term Ecological Research site
Seminar Summary
Ecological and socio-economic processes are driving many of the world’s rangelands beyond thresholds or “tipping points” to degraded states, but we have a poor understanding of the mechanisms by which these processes are linked to each other. We argue that this is due largely to the lack of concepts and data integrating patterns and processes across scales, especially region-scale patterns.
We review three key concepts guiding our approach to investigating rangeland degradation. First, a mechanistic understanding of tipping points must be based on understanding cross-scale relationships in pattern-process interactions. One insight is that the scales at which we should look for significant patterns/processes (e.g., those that explain variation in vegetation and soil degradation) vary with context and are often broader than we implicitly recognise. Second, transitions to degraded states are strongly conditioned by climo-edaphic heterogeneity. We are only beginning to identify and quantify the key attributes that govern transitions and know little about how climate change will modify those relationships. Finally, it is widely held that human behaviors underlie the loss of resilience and vulnerability to thresholds, but we have little systematic understanding of how variations in behavior affect them. For example, changing markets, land-user motivations, and fragmentation of rangeland may have large and unrecognised impacts on transitions, and may circumvent any meaningful role for insights and tools derived from scientific studies of biophysical processes.
Improvements to the tools and policies we use to react to thresholds in rangelands will require broad-scale, social-ecological approaches that are still nascent.
Read more about the speaker
Friday 7th September – 11.00am
Manipulating complex wetlands invaded by alien grasses
Dr Tony Grice, Senior Research Scientist, CSIRO Rangelands & Savannas
Seminar Summary
Northern Australian wetlands are subject to invasion by a variety of invasive plant species. These include the naturalised, stoloniferous pasture grasses Hymenachne amplexicaulis (hymenachne) and Urochloa mutica (para grass). A collaborative project involving CSIRO, Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service and the Burdekin Dry Tropics Inc. is examining the impacts of para grass on the structure and function of the wetlands of the Townsville Town Common Conservation Park; the potential for broad-scale management of para grass using cattle grazing and fire; and the responses of vegetation and the dependent fauna to these manipulations. This seminar will describe the results of this work so far.
Friday 31st August – 11.00am
Erin Bohensky
Understanding social resilience to water quality change in the Great Barrier Reef catchment
Friday 24th August – 11.00am
Linking pattern and process in semi-arid rangelands: hysteretic response to grazing requires a functional approach to assessing landscape condition
Kate Searle, Post Doctoral Fellow, CSIRO Rangelands and Savannas
Seminar Summary
Understanding the consequences of livestock grazing on system structure and function plays a critical role in managing large regions of the earth’s terrestrial surface. In semi-arid rangelands especially, there are strong linkages between vegetation pattern and ecological function, and yet many systems of landscape condition assessment rely solely upon structural indicators of system health such as biomass or percent cover.
We put forward a conceptual model that synthesises current understanding about linkages between vegetation pattern and ecological processes in semi-arid rangelands with the concept of hysteresis. A system displaying a hysteretic response will not retrace its path as an underlying driving variable varies cyclically. This model provides a basis for measuring landscape condition in the face of strong spatial and temporal environmental variation that is so typical of these systems. The model predicts that differences in the rate at which key system components can respond to a system driver (grazing and trampling by cattle) create lag effects that drive a hysteretic response in ecosystem function during degradation and subsequent recovery.
We use data from a semi-arid rangeland in northern Australia to test this prediction, and show that it is only by measuring both structure and function that an accurate picture of system health can be captured. This is because recovery of spatial linkages between plants, soil moisture and nutrients lags behind structural recovery of vegetation pattern.
Our results demonstrate that purely structural measurements of rangeland condition fail to adequately capture important changes in ecological function when vegetation and soil components react at different rates to grazing and trampling by cattle. These different response capacities create lag effects that decouple functional linkages between plants, soil moisture and nutrients.
We demonstrate the consequences of this decoupling by showing that while recovering communities may structurally resemble intact systems, their functionality can remain severely impaired. Finally, we propose that it may be possible to empirically quantify ecological thresholds and alternative stable states in semi-arid rangelands by identifying the scale of functional linkages between spatial patterns of vegetation, soil moisture and nutrients.
Friday 17th August – 11.00am
Pre-clearing vegetation of the Wet Tropics Bioregion lowlands
Jeanette Kemp, Principal Botanist, Queensland Herbarium, Environmental Protection Agency
Seminar Summary
A pre-clearing vegetation map and digital coverage of approximately 1:50 000 scale was created for the Wet Tropics Bioregion as a part of a joint project between the Queensland Herbarium and the Wet Tropics Management Authority. Data sources included historical aerial photography, original surveyors' plans, early explorer's journals, previous vegetation maps, as well as coverages of soils and geology. The pre-clearing mapping was built around the remnant vegetation mapping of Stanton and Stanton (2005), and the vegetation classification of this latter work was adopted. Vegetation units were further classified into regional ecosystems compatible with the standard State-wide system used by Queensland government, and the digital coverage became part of the current Queensland Herbarium regional ecosystem coverage (Queensland Herbarium and Wet Tropics Management Authority 2005).
An evaluation of vegetation loss through clearing on the coastal lowlands of the Wet Tropics revealed several near-extinct vegetation communities and regional ecosystems, and many others that are drastically reduced in area. Even types occurring on poorly drained lands have suffered a surprisingly high level of loss due to the effectiveness of drainage operations. The lowlands vegetation of the Wet Tropics that remains today continues to be fragmented and degraded despite the introduction of State-wide broad-scale tree-clearing laws in 1999.
Friday 3rd August – 11.00am
Myth Busters: Is northern Australia our vast water supply?
Cuan Petheram, Hydrologist, CSIRO Land & Water
Seminar Summary
There is growing interest in developing the water resources of northern Australia. One of the main proponents are large and small irrigators. However, there have been numerous attempts to develop cultivated agriculture in northern Australia in the past, many of which have been judged unsuccessful. One often cited factor is a failure to understand the northern environment.
In this presentation we examine one of these factors, water. To address the data deficiencies in past continental scale analysis of Australian and global streamflow datasets, a database of flow records from 99 unregulated rivers across northern Australia (each with 10 years or more of near continuous record) was assembled. These data were used to gain an understanding of the key features of the surface water resources of northern Australia, by performing a series of analyses at annual, monthly and daily time-steps.
Results from these analyses are compared with results from the Rest of the World and from southern Australia to ascertain whether river flow in northern Australia is anomalous or not and to make an assessment of the relative potential for irrigation in northern Australia (based upon surface water resources).
Thursday 19th July – 11.00am
Savannas FACE the future: a window into the future CO2-rich atmosphere
Chris Stokes, CSIRO Rangelands and Savannas
Seminar Summary
We tested the responses of a tropical savanna ecosystem to elevated CO2 using a Free Air CO2 Enrichment experiment, the first such experiment in the tropics and the first in a C4-dominated ecosystem. We found that rising atmospheric CO2, even without changes in climate, will profoundly affect the structure and function of savannas. The mechanism for these responses was mediated mainly through the influence of CO2 in altering the patterns of use of limiting water and nitrogen resources. Reduced transpiration of tropical grasses under elevated CO2 prolonged the short-term availability of soil moisture after rainfall events and, over the longer term, lead to increases in soil moisture below the grass rooting zone.
These changes, in turn, stimulated grass production, particularly in moderately dry years, and lead to a shift in grass community composition favouring Themeda triandra (kangaroo grass). Increases in plant production diluted limiting nitrogen resources in plant tissues, reducing the quality of forage for livestock and other herbivores, and reducing the decay rates of plant litter. The influence of elevated CO2 on savannas will have both positive (e.g., increased forage production) and negative (e.g., reduced diet quality) practical implications for land managers: understanding these changes will assist in developing adaptation strategies that maximise the beneficial changes while minimising the negative impacts.
By changing the way that limiting resources are utilised within ecosystems, elevated CO2 will have a far-ranging influence on ecosystem processes with implications for the services (e.g., forage for cattle, runoff from river catchments, wood production) these ecosystems provide. In particular, the contribution of C4 plants to global responses to rising CO2 may currently be under-appreciated.
Friday 6th July, 2007 at 11.00 pm
The tall sugarcane syndrome
Dr. Geoff Iman-Bamber, CSIRO
Seminar Summary
High sucrose content (SC) in sugarcane stalks is a priority for all sugarcane industries world wide. Partitioning to sucrose in the cane stalk is related to the supply of photo-assimilate and the demand for assimilate by other organs. If photosynthesis could be maintained, but leaf and stalk growth constrained, by genetics or management, during the stalk elongation phase it may be possible to reduce stalk height and to increase both SC and sucrose yield. This talk reports an experiment designed to test this hypothesis and to develop a methodology to assess variation in response to source-sink manipulation in sugarcane clones. The research was conducted on a ‘low’ (Q138) and a ‘high’ (Q183) SC cultivar in two temperature controlled and airtight glasshouses (chambers) at CSIRO’s Davies Laboratory in Townsville. Potted plants of each cultivar were placed in two chambers of the Tall Plant Facility (TPF) and in one chamber they were irrigated to minimise water stress while plants in the other chamber were irrigated to reduce plant extension rate (PER) considerably more than photosynthesis.
Water stress reduced gain in total biomass by 19% and gain in top mass by 37%, and increased sucrose mass gain by 27%. During the experiment SC of dry matter increased 37% in the dry treatment and only 8% in the wet treatment and this effect was greater in Q183 than in Q138. Water stress reduced whole plant photosynthesis by 18% thus largely accounting for the 19% reduction in biomass accumulation and it reduced PER by 41 %, corresponding to the 37% reduction in mass of tops. Reduced PER resulted in reduced demand for photo-assimilate by fibre and tops thus allowing excess assimilate to accumulate in the form of sucrose. The techniques developed here to control PER and measure the resulting changes in carbon partitioning now allow further examination of both the control of the balance between growth and sucrose storage and the extent of genotypic variation to the response of reduced PER. The research also raises the possibility for reduced water use and offsite impacts in irrigated sugarcane production and the talk will demonstrate a web application that will help growers to exploit new knowledge on crop water use and on the differential effect of water stress on PER and photosynthesis.
About the Speaker
Geoff is a principle research scientist with CSE in the Tropical Landscapes Program where he leads a small team (Mike Spillman, Steve Attard, Shaun Verrall) responsible for irrigation R&D in the sugar industry. The team has considerable impact in the industry as recognised by a number of industry and CSE awards and more recently by research leading to a 30% reduction in water use in the Ord sugar industry. Geoff has interests in crop physiology and modelling going back to his time with the South African Sugarcane Research Institute where he worked for 21 years before coming to Australia in 1997.
Thursday 5th July, 2007 at 1.00 pm
Northern Australia Irrigation Futures – Developing an ESD framework to support irrigation decision making
Jeff Camkin, CLW Sustainability Specialist with the Northern Australian Irrigation Futures project
Seminar Summary
More details on the NAIF project can be obtained from the project website at www.clw.csiro.au/naif/
About the Speaker
More details about Jeff Camkin are available at www.clw.csiro.au/staff/CamkinJ/
Friday 29th June, 2007 at 11.00 am
Complexity of Urbanisation Patterns and Resource Use in Sea Change Communities across Australia: the interplay between pattern and structure
Dr. Kostas Alexandridis, Regional Futures Analyst, CSIRO Resource Futures
Seminar Summary
Sea Change is a persistent and wide-spread phenomenon across the vast majority of coastal communities of Australia. Urbanisation patterns and their relationship with resource patterns of use are gaining recognition in both the scientific and planning communities. The magnitude, structure and degree of resource use in many sea change communities are closely linked to many patterns and magnitudes of change, including demographic, economic, urban development and environmental changes occurring simultaneously, and across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Our ability to respond and/or anticipate future changes in coupled human-environmental systems rests upon our understanding of the systemic interactions, feedbacks and cross-scale linkages that emerge and co-evolve across multiple scales and domains. This approach highlights the benefits of a systematic study of the system characteristics of urban, sub-urban, peri-urban and ex-urban changes with a social and sociological understanding of resource dependencies and accounting, and provides a profiling of sea change communities in both of these dimensions.
About the Speaker
Dr. Kostas Alexandridis is a Regional Futures Analyst and a research scientist with CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems. He is studying the interactions and coupling between human and natural systems and their implications to decision-making across multiple scales and knowledge domains in Australia. His research emphasizes the use of advanced and cutting-edge dynamic modeling and simulation techniques and the study of information and knowledge flows. He received his Ph.D. from Purdue University in USA, where he acquired experience on modeling land use change and sprawl dynamics across a range of local, sub-regional and regional landscapes. He has worked with communities, planners and stakeholders to achieve a common and societal understanding of land use change as a complex phenomenon from the individual to the global level, and has participated in multi-national and multi-institutional collaborations across the world.
Dr. Heinz Schandl holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Vienna, Austria and leads and contributes to research into sustainability transitions at CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems. His research investigates how social systems can be guided towards a sustainable future, explores society’s potential for sustainable development, and provides information to support planning, decision-making and policy formulation. His current research looks at how social development and the necessary natural resources can be organized in an economically viable, socially acceptable and environmentally sound way, allowing for restructuring and reorganising of basic support systems of nutrition, transport, mobility, housing and energy provision. He has coordinated international research projects in Europe and Southeast Asia exploring possible pathways towards sustainability and improving the political decision making process.
Friday 1st June, 2007 at 2.00 pm
The tussle between plants with poisons and mammals that eat them
Dr. Clare McArthur, School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney
Seminar Summary
Plants can’t run away from herbivores but they certainly don’t sit there and say eat me, eat me. Many plants have toxins in their leaves, which modify how herbivores forage and how much they eat. At the same time, herbivores make foraging decisions based not only on the characteristics of each plant, but also on the characteristics of larger vegetation patches. This means that there is a complex interplay between the influence of plants on herbivores and the influence of herbivores on plants – a silent dynamic tussle. I will discuss aspects of these plant-herbivore interactions based on my research on mammalian herbivores and the Australian natural and managed environment. Implications of this research are not just confined to providing us with a fundamental understanding of the system, but will help us predict the effects of a changing vegetation landscape on herbivores and the effects of invasive herbivores on that landscape.
About the Speaker
Dr Clare McArthy is a researcher at the University of Sydney.
Click on the link to read more about Dr McArthur
Wdnesday 30th May, 2007 at 2.00 pm
Biodiversity and Land Condition in Tropical Savanna Rangelands
Dr. Alaric Fisher, Biodiversity Conservation Division, Department of Natural Resources Environment and the Arts in the Northern Territory
Seminar Summary
There are well-established procedures for assessing and monitoring “land condition” in Australian rangelands, but no programs that explicitly monitor biodiversity. This seminar reports on a project that explored the link between land condition and biodiversity in representative areas of Australia’s tropical savanna rangelands. By detailed biodiversity assessment at sites in a range of “land condition” states, this project investigated what information about biodiversity status may be contained within a simple “poor” to “good” categorisation, and the value as surrogates for biodiversity of commonly-used indicators for land condition such as perennial grass cover. Biodiversity sampling – which included plants, ants and vertebrates – was undertaken at 216 sites in 5 landtypes in two important pastoral regions of northern Queensland and the Northern Territory.
The response of biota to land condition was assessed in term of species composition, total species richness, diversity & abundance (broken down into taxonomic and functional groups), and the abundance of individual species. Land condition appears to be most strongly predictive for components of the biota whose ecology is closely linked to characteristics of the ground surface and density of groundlayer vegetation, most notably ants. However, there was only a weak relationship between land condition and many aspects of biodiversity, and the response of biota to land condition was complex and highly variable between taxa, landtypes and locations. The inconsistent response to condition of many species and functional groups made it difficult to identify components of the biota that are most susceptible to degradation, or identify ecological traits that may be indicators of susceptibility. The incorporation of additional habitat variables (such as litter cover, rock cover, tree canopy cover) substantially improved modelled relationships between land condition and biodiversity attributes.
This project identified that land condition is, by itself, too blunt an instrument to adequately monitor biodiversity status in savanna rangelands. Nevertheless, improvements in land condition across rangeland landscapes are likely to have positive biodiversity consequences. The incorporation of additional habitat attributes into site-based condition assessment (in a manner analogous to the “Habitat Hectares” approach, but designed for tropical savanna landscapes) would greatly improve information content about potential biodiversity condition. However, comprehensive biodiversity monitoring programs, at local or regional scale, must include the direct assessment of selected biota.
About the Speaker
Dr Alaric Fisher is Senior Scientist with the Biodiversity Conservation Division, Department of Natural Resources Environment and the Arts in the Northern Territory. He has spent the last 20 years undertaking biodiversity research in the Northern Territory, ranging from ecological determinants of wildlife pattern, threatened species research, bioregional fauna surveys and land management effects on wildlife. His recent focus has been biodiversity conservation in tropical savanna grazing land, specifically focusing on incorporating conservation into pastoral lands in the Mitchell Grass Downs and Victoria River District. Alaric has been leading the biodiversity component of the significant Heytesbury Beef project. This seminar reports of a large collaborative project with Land and Water Australia and the Tropical Savanna CRC examining the meaning of “condition” for wildlife
Tuesday 1st May, 2007 at 11 am - CSIRO Davies Laboratory Meeting Room 2
Modelling the exposure of inner-shelf reefs to nutrient enriched runoff entering the Great Barrier Reef Lagoon
Scott Wooldridge, a MTSRF PhD Student based at AIMS.
Seminar Summary
Recent modelling efforts have suggested large regional differences in the nutrient enrichment impact of runoff events that discharge from the various GBR drainage basins (Wooldridge et al. 2006). In this seminar, Scott will outline the integrative modelling framework (and data sources) that underpins these predictions. The potential to embed the end-of-catchment outcomes of CSIRO land management scenarios within the modelling framework will also be discussed.
Three-part series of seminars on Bayesian Network
Kostas Alexandridis, Regional Futures Analyst, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems
Monday 14th March, 2007 at 2 pm
Monday 13th April, 2007 at 1.30 pm - limited to 16 participants, please send expression of interest to reserve your seat
Monday 31 May, 2007 at 12 noon
The first seminar will provide the basics of Bayesian networks.
The second is a tutorial on Bayesian nets software (Netica).
The third addresses rather advanced topics for the ones have an interest that goes beyond the basics.
Please read the PDF for more detailed information on each seminar
Thursday 8th March, 2007 at 10 am
International Women's Day
The Hon Virginia Chadwick, Chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority
Seminar Summary
Please join in to celebrate International Women’s Day at CSIRO with morning tea in the garden on Thursday March 8th. We are extremely fortunate to have the Honourable Virginia Chadwick AO, chairman, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, agree to talk with us about the 'tips and traps for women on the move'.
About the Speaker
The Hon Virginia Chadwick was appointed as Chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority in July 1999 and reappointed in 2004. Prior to her appointment, she served in the NSW Legislative Council, holding various Shadow Ministerial and ministerial positions. She was the first woman elected as President of the Legislative Council. She has received an Honorary Doctorate from the Southern Cross University and an Australian Centenary Medal. Mrs Chadwick was awarded an Office in the General Division of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday 2005 Honours List. Mrs Chadwick currently is a Board member of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, a Board member of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and has accepted appointment as a Board member of the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security.
Monday 26th February, 2007 at 2 pm
The Nature and Impacts of different communication styles – as seen through the eyes of a Scientist
Dr. Mandy Kotzman, Scientist and Author, Fort Collins, Colorado
Seminar Summary
Science is often characterised as involving the objective collection and interpretation of information. The challenge for many scientists is how to share their findings with colleagues and broader audience, as communication involves more than just information exchange. Communication is also about establishing, maintaining and modifying relationships.
Research has shown that men and women tend to have different communication styles and agendas. Because its often not “what” you communicate, but the “how” you communicate it that makes all the difference, this seminar will explore the nature and impacts of some different communication styles.
About the Speaker
An ex- CSIRO employee, Mandy Kotzman is co-author of the book “Listen to Me, Listen to You". She graduated from Monash University with a BSc (Honours) in biology and physical geography, a PhD in ecology, and a Diploma of Education.
After teaching and carrying out research in Australia, Israel and the USA, she trained in mediation in Australia (Queensland Justice Department) and life coaching in the USA (Institute for Life Coach Training). As a member of the International Coach Federation, Mandy's coaching is aligned with its principles and code of ethics. She focuses on enhancing self-awareness and personal effectiveness, and on crafting creative solutions to life's challenges.
Wednesday 7th February, 2007 at 2.00pm
Recent research on woody vegetation dynamics in Queensland
Dr Rod Fensham, Chief Scientist, Queensland Herbarium
Seminar Summary
Recent research verifies the importance of rainfall cycles on woody vegetation dynamics in eucalypt woodlands. The patchiness of drought-induced dieback is at least partly related to sub-soil conditions. Fire may be important in shaping the structure and distribution of some vegetation communities such as gidgee woodland. However an analysis of an extraordinary historical record suggests relative stability in the major vegetation patterns of semi-arid Australia.
About the Speaker
Rod Fensham has been researching vegetation dynamics and landscape ecology for decades in Queensland, the Northern Territory, Victoria and Tasmania. He is one of Australia’s leading scientists and has published widely, his interests ranging from woody vegetation pattern, water remoteness, climate cycles, fire, cattle grazing, historical and explorer records, legislation, and threatened species. In recent years he has concentrated on the question of woody thickening in Queensland and challenged contemporary views that the process was an unnatural state needing direct management and redress. His long term, innovative work was recently heralded by winning the 2005 Eureka Prize for Environmental Research along with his long term partner in crime, Russell Fairfax.
An extract from awards testimonial states, “Fensham and Fairfax looked outside the square. Starting with explorers' reports, old diaries, half a century's worth of aerial photos and many other sources, they were able to identify the real changes that had occurred in natural vegetation and to search for the causes of those changes. Collectively, their work forms a comprehensive, compelling and sophisticated chronicle. It represents a significant increase in our understanding of how to protect bush and grasslands. Along the way, the researchers dispelled some myths. They showed that climate cycles drove the appearance of woody weeds and that bush clearing would not stop the spread of these weeds. And they proved that clearing is a net producer of greenhouse gas, clearly outweighing any reduction associated with vegetation thickening. Land clearing was not the saviour of the grasslands, as some had argued, but was in fact its greatest threat.”
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