Justin G. Ryan

Can a problem-solving approach strengthen landscape ecology’s contribution to sustainable landscape planning?

The need to avert unacceptable and irreversible environmental change is the most urgent challenge facing society. Landscape ecology has the capacity to help address these challenges by providing spatially-explicit solutions to landscape sustainability problems. However, despite a large body of research, the real impact of landscape ecology on sustainable landscape management and planning is still limited. In this paper, we first outline a typology of landscape sustainability problems which serves to guide landscape ecologists in the problem-solving process. We then outline a formal problem-solving approach, whereby landscape ecologists can better bring about disciplinary integration, a consideration of multiple landscape functions over long time scales, and a focus on decision making. This framework explicitly considers multiple ecological objectives and socio-economic constraints, the spatial allocation of scarce resources to address these objectives, and the timing of the implementation of management actions. It aims to make explicit the problem-solving objectives, management options and the system understanding required to make sustainable landscape planning decisions. We propose that by adopting a more problem-solving approach, landscape ecologists can make a significant contribution towards realising sustainable future landscapes.

Integrated vegetation designs for enhancing water retention and recycling in agroecosystems

Long term studies have shown strong links between vegetation clearing and rainfall declines and more intense droughts. Many agroecosystems are exposed to more extreme weather and further declines in rainfall under climate change unless adaptations increase the retention of water in landscapes, and its recycling back to the lower atmosphere. Vegetation systems provide vital feedbacks to mechanisms that underpin water vapour recycling between micro- and meso-scales. Various heterogeneous forms of vegetation can help generate atmospheric conditions conducive to precipitation, and therefore, increase the resilience of agroecosystems to drought and climatic extremes. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how vegetation can be designed for agroecosystems to enhance recycling of water vapour to the atmosphere through the regulation of surface water and wind, and heat fluxes. The structure of the paper revolves around five functions of integrated vegetation designs that can help underpin the restoration of water recycling through enhanced retention of stormwater, protection from wind, moistening and cooling the landscape, production of plant litter, and contribution toward regional scale climate and catchment functioning. We also present two supplementary functions relevant to land and natural resource managers which may also be integrated using these designs.

Transformational change: creating a safe operating space for humanity

Many ecologists and environmental scientists witnessing the scale of current environmental change are becoming increasingly alarmed about how humanity is pushing the boundaries of the Earths systems beyond sustainable levels. The world urgently needs global society to redirect itself toward a more sustainable future: one that moves intergenerational equity and environmental sustainability to the top of the political agenda, and to the core of personal and societal belief systems. Scientific and technological innovations are not enough: the global community, individuals, civil society, corporations, and governments, need to adjust their values and beliefs to one in which sustainability becomes the new global paradigm society. We argue that the solution requires transformational change, driven by a realignment of societal values, where individuals act ethically as an integral part of an interconnected society and biosphere. Transition management provides a framework for achieving transformational change, by giving special attention to reflective learning, interaction, integration, and experimentation at the level of society, thereby identifying the system conditions and type of changes necessary for enabling sustainable transformation.

Biomass retention and carbon stocks in integrated vegetation bands: a case study of mixed-age brigalow-eucalypt woodland in southern Queensland, Australia

Regrowth of native woody vegetation has the potential to provide an economically valuable source of carbon storage and other ecosystem services. There is a lack of readily applicable examples of how regrowth of forests and woodlands can be integrated with existing grazing production systems and provide soil-protection and water-retention benefits. A system of integrated vegetation bands (IVB) was applied to patchy regrowth of acacia and eucalypt vegetation in a grazed landscape of southern Queensland, Australia. Across a 39.8-ha catchment with 3–5% slope, regrowth of scattered native vegetation (18.4 ha) was surveyed and diameter at breast height and height for all woody plants were recorded. The IVB (6.3 ha) were then marked out as 25-m-wide bands set 100 m apart and offset at ~2–3% gradient to the contour line, retaining the densest/largest regrowth where possible. The data on diameter at breast height and height were analysed using allometric equations to compare aboveground biomass in the original regrowth condition (‘Original’) to that retained in the installed IVB (‘IVB-Riparian’). Estimates of aboveground biomass were calculated for the Original and IVB-Riparian and compared with three other potential regrowth-vegetation management ‘treatments’ in a desktop-modelling study. The models were designated as: (1) ‘Original’; (2) ‘Broad’ (broad-scale cleared with only a few large trees along a creek retained)’; (3) ‘Big Trees’ (only large trees >40 cm diameter at breast height retained); (4) ‘Riparian-IVB (bands of vegetation); and (5) ‘Riparian-IVB-Big Trees’ (large trees together with ‘IVB-Riparian’). In the non-forested area of the catchment, ‘Riparian-IVB-Big Trees’ (301 t), ‘Big Trees’ (249 t) and ‘Riparian-IVB’ (200 t) had the highest aboveground biomass retained, whereas ‘Broad’ resulted in the most pasture area (~33 ha) followed by ‘Riparian-IVB’ (~26 ha). The ‘Riparian-IVB’ treatment had the highest tree density within the vegetation bands and more than half (53%) of the original woody biomass in regrowth was retained on just under a quarter (23%) of the land area minimising the impact on the area of pasture/grazing land. This subsequently resulted in the ‘Riparian-IVB’ treatment having the highest carbon offset value (A

Climate change and land clearing: A short note

605 ha–1). The results demonstrate that the retention of native regrowth vegetation in either IVB or as large paddock trees can retain a large amount of aboveground biomass, with IVB having greater returns per hectare.

Climate change impacts on northern Australian rangeland livestock carrying capacity: a review of issues

The article offers information on climate change as a multi-dimensional issue where forces affect climate system. It states that the modification and conversions of terrestrial ecosystems through human land use is acknowledged as second order that force behind climate changes. Modelling studies have significant implications for native vegetation and Natural Resource Management in Australia.