Alison Specht

When trends intersect: The challenge of protecting freshwater ecosystems under multiple land use and hydrological intensification scenarios

Intensification of the use of natural resources is a world-wide trend driven by the increasing demand for water, food, fibre, minerals and energy. These demands are the result of a rising world population, increasing wealth and greater global focus on economic growth. Land use intensification, together with climate change, is also driving intensification of the global hydrological cycle. Both processes will have major socio-economic and ecological implications for global water availability. In this paper we focus on the implications of land use intensification for the conservation and management of freshwater ecosystems using Australia as an example. We consider this in the light of intensification of the hydrologic cycle due to climate change, and associated hydrological scenarios that include the occurrence of more intense hydrological events (extreme storms, larger floods and longer droughts). We highlight the importance of managing water quality, the value of providing environmental flows within a watershed framework and the critical role that innovative science and adaptive management must play in developing proactive and robust responses to intensification. We also suggest research priorities to support improved systemic governance, including adaptation planning and management to maximise freshwater biodiversity outcomes while supporting the socio-economic objectives driving land use intensification. Further research priorities include: i) determining the relative contributions of surface water and groundwater in supporting freshwater ecosystems; ii) identifying and protecting freshwater biodiversity hotspots and refugia; iii) improving our capacity to model hydro-ecological relationships and predict ecological outcomes from land use intensification and climate change; iv) developing an understanding of long term ecosystem behaviour; and v) exploring systemic approaches to enhancing governance systems, including planning and management systems affecting freshwater outcomes. A major policy challenge will be the integration of land and water management, which increasingly are being considered within different policy frameworks.

Designing environmental research for impact

Transdisciplinary research, involving close collaboration between researchers and the users of research, has been a feature of environmental problem solving for several decades, often spurred by the need to find negotiated outcomes to intractable problems. In 2005, the Australian government allocated funding to its environment portfolio for public good research, which resulted in consecutive four-year programmes (Commonwealth Environmental Research Facilities, National Environmental Research Program). In April 2014, representatives of the funders, researchers and research users associated with these programmes met to reflect on eight years of experience with these collaborative research models. This structured reflection concluded that successful multi-institutional transdisciplinary research is necessarily a joint enterprise between funding agencies, researchers and the end users of research. The design and governance of research programmes need to explicitly recognise shared accountabilities among the participants, while respecting the different perspectives of each group. Experience shows that traditional incentive systems for academic researchers, current trends in public sector management, and loose organisation of many end users, work against sustained transdisciplinary research on intractable problems, which require continuity and adaptive learning by all three parties. The likelihood of research influencing and improving environmental policy and management is maximised when researchers, funders and research users have shared goals; there is sufficient continuity of personnel to build trust and sustain dialogue throughout the research process from issue scoping to application of findings; and there is sufficient flexibility in the funding, structure and operation of transdisciplinary research initiatives to enable the enterprise to assimilate and respond to new knowledge and situations.

Transdisciplinary synthesis for ecosystem science, policy and management: The Australian experience

Mitigating the environmental effects of global population growth, climatic change and increasing socio-ecological complexity is a daunting challenge. To tackle this requires synthesis: the integration of disparate information to generate novel insights from heterogeneous, complex situations where there are diverse perspectives. Since 1995, a structured approach to inter-, multi- and trans-disciplinary(1) collaboration around big science questions has been supported through synthesis centres around the world. These centres are finding an expanding role due to ever-accumulating data and the need for more and better opportunities to develop transdisciplinary and holistic approaches to solve real-world problems. The Australian Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (ACEAS ) has been the pioneering ecosystem science synthesis centre in the Southern Hemisphere. Such centres provide analysis and synthesis opportunities for time-pressed scientists, policy-makers and managers. They provide the scientific and organisational environs for virtual and face-to-face engagement, impetus for integration, data and methodological support, and innovative ways to deliver synthesis products. We detail the contribution, role and value of synthesis using ACEAS to exemplify the capacity for synthesis centres to facilitate trans-organisational, transdisciplinary synthesis. We compare ACEAS to other international synthesis centres, and describe how it facilitated project teams and its objective of linking natural resource science to policy to management. Scientists and managers were brought together to actively collaborate in multi-institutional, cross-sectoral and transdisciplinary research on contemporary ecological problems. The teams analysed, integrated and synthesised existing data to co-develop solution-oriented publications and management recommendations that might otherwise not have been produced. We identify key outcomes of some ACEAS working groups which used synthesis to tackle important ecosystem challenges. We also examine the barriers and enablers to synthesis, so that risks can be minimised and successful outcomes maximised. We argue that synthesis centres have a crucial role in developing, communicating and using synthetic transdisciplinary research.

SPECIES RICHNESS OF PLANT COMMUNITIES: RELATIONSHIP WITH COMMUNITY GROWTH AND STRUCTURE

ABSTRACT The species richness of the overstorey of plant communities, receiving maximum solar radiation for the region, is correlated with the annual growth rate of that stratum. The species richness of the understorey is influenced firstly by the amount of solar energy transmitted through the overstorey and secondly by the proportion of community photosynthates translocated to inflorescence and seed production in that stratum. In plant communities where an overstorey is reduced or absent, the growth form of the ground-stratum plants will determine the proportion of the community photosynthates translocated to flower and seed production. Only a small proportion of community photosynthates will be directed to seed production in plant communities with shrubby understoreys. In savanna communities, overgrazing will convert the ground stratum from a perennial tussock grass growth form either to a rhizomatous, lawn-like growth form or to an annual growth form. In semiarid to arid environments, the annual growth...

The ratio of foliar nitrogen to foliar phosphorus: a determinant of leaf attributes and height in life-forms of subtropical and tropical plant communities.

In the species-rich overstorey of tropical and subtropical closed-forests (rainforests), a series of life-forms (emergent trees, canopy trees, subcanopy trees, mid-stratum trees and shrubs, interlaced with lianes) of increasing basal area, height and foliage attributes (leaf area, leaf specific weight and internode length) develop in equilibrium with aerodynamic fluxes (frictional, thermal, evaporative±atmospheric salinity) in the atmosphere as it flows turbulently over and through a plant community. In both closed-forest and open-forest communities in eastern Australia, the translocation of high-energy nitrogen and phosphorus compounds into developing leaves - during the driest season of the year - increases as soil water becomes more available in the climatic gradient from the subhumid to the per-humid zone. Foliage attributes (leaf area and leaf specific weight) of vertical shoots are determined by the rate of input of high-energy compounds into developing shoot apices. Increasing nutrient input in the transpiration stream results in a greater number of leaves (with similar leaf specific weights) on vertical foliage shoots. The leaf area index of the tree is thus enhanced and leads to increased biomass, basal area and height at maturity. In each life-form within a closed-forest, the size of the root system is allometrically related to aboveground attributes. The ability of the root system to explore available nitrogen and phosphorus stored in the surface soil thus determines the attributes of developing foliage shoots in each of these life-forms. Both leaf areas and leaf specific weights decrease from maxima in canopy trees to leaves of subcanopy and mid-stratum trees in the milder climate under the dense structure of per-humid rainforests. In contrast, in the open-structured, subhumid rainforests, although leaf areas decrease in the gradient from canopy to mid-stratum trees - all exposed to direct solar radiation - leaf specific weights increase as temperatures in the boundary layer around growth-apices increase. The production of nitrate ions in soil, exposed to solar radiation in gaps, increases the uptake of nitrogen into leaves of pioneer trees. Larger and thinner leaves, with higher foliar N:P ratios and nitrate reductase activity, result in and enable rapid regeneration of the rainforest.

Perceived discontinuities and continuities in transdisciplinary scientific working groups

We examine the DataONE (Data Observation Network for Earth) project, a transdisciplinary organization tasked with creating a cyberinfrastructure platform to ensure preservation of and access to environmental science and biological science data. Its objective was a difficult one to achieve, requiring innovative solutions. The DataONE project used a working group structure to organize its members. We use organizational discontinuity theory as our lens to understand the factors associated with success in such projects. Based on quantitative and qualitative data collected from DataONE members, we offer recommendations for the use of working groups in transdisciplinary synthesis. Recommendations include welcome diverse opinions and world views, establish shared communication practices, schedule periodic synchronous face-to-face meetings, and ensure the active participation of bridge builders or knowledge brokers such as librarians who know how to ask questions about disciplines not their own.

Synthesis centers as critical research infrastructure

Abstract Synthesis centers offer a unique amalgam of culture, infrastructure, leadership, and support that facilitates creative discovery on issues crucial to science and society. The combination of logistical support, postdoctoral or senior fellowships, complex data management, informatics and computing capability or expertise, and most of all, opportunity for group discussion and reflection lowers the “activation energy” necessary to promote creativity and the cross‐fertilization of ideas. Synthesis centers are explicitly created and operated as community‐oriented infrastructure, with scholarly directions driven by the ever‐changing interests and needs of an open and inclusive scientific community. The last decade has seen a rise in the number of synthesis centers globally but also the end of core federal funding for several, challenging the sustainability of the infrastructure for this key research strategy. Here, we present the history and rationale for supporting synthesis centers, integrate insights arising from two decades of experience, and explore the challenges and opportunities for long‐term sustainability.

Australia, Biodiversity of Ecosystems

Floristic components of almost 5000 ecological surveys of Australian vegetation were sorted into 338 TWINSPAN floristic groups. Eight major biogeographic regions, with 45 subdivisions, were defined. Species richness (number of species per hectare) of overstory plants is positively related to the annual biomass production of that stratum. The annual growth of the understory stratum is dependent on the light penetrating the overstory, therefore species richness of this stratum is higher in the early stages of secondary succession and in tropical than in temperate climates. Species richness of small mammals, frogs, and snakes parallels that of the understory stratum; species richness of epigaeic invertebrates depends on the annual supply of leaf litter.

Riparian Vegetation Change on the Clarence River Floodplain

The natural streamside levees on the floodplain of the Clarence River in subtropical eastern Australia were occupied by riparian rainforest prior to European settlement. They were almost completely cleared for agriculture over a ten-year period from 1857 as a direct consequence of changes to land ownership laws. The floodplain is now a highly developed landscape, with the riverside levees occupied by roads, houses and agriculture, with minimal remnant vegetation. Comparison of 343 sites from 1942 and 2001 aerial photographs using GIS show that there has been an increase in overstorey riparian vegetation density and riparian width, both from very low bases. Ground surveys record that the overstorey riparian vegetation is predominately native with a weedy mid-stratum. Species diversity is low and targeted plantings may be required to provide a pool of rainforest species to start the slow process of recreating this important area of biodiversity. The majority of the increase in the width of riparian vegetation is due to the streams in the floodplain becoming narrower. This is caused by a combination of stream meander and infrastructure protection works. This study highlights the interaction of erosion, stream meander, infrastructure protection and riparian vegetation, and the implications for those managing floodplain streams.

Initial observations of a population of Mitchell's Rainforest Snail Thersites mitchellae Cox 1864

Mitchells Rainforest Snail Thersites mitchellae Cox 1864 is listed as ‘endangered’ under the NSW Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995, as ‘critically endangered’ under the Environment Protecti...