Habitat

The e-Atlas was established as a MTSRF project to capture and communicate research outcomes.  Under the NERP Tropical Ecosystems Hub the e-Atlas will be developed further based on research user feedback to provide the most effective method for capturing, visualising and communicating the Hub’s research outcomes.

This project will partner the region’s key stakeholders to review, trial and evaluate the most effective governance systems and planning foundations for regional and landscape scale adaptation to climate change. In particular, within the context of these governance systems and planning arrangements, it will focus on the potential application of emerging ecosystem service markets to secure landscape scale resilience for biodiversity in the face of climate change.

The key intent of the Project will be to:

The project is focused on naturally regenerating forests (regrowth) and their potential to offer a much needed low cost option to restore critical habitat over large areas. It will assist decisions about how to most efficiently restore biodiversity to degraded rainforest landscapes, by providing new knowledge about the outcomes of lower-cost regrowth (including potential for minimum intervention management).

Managers of the world heritage Great Barrier Reef have repeatedly made stronger calls for social science data to assist them in their day-to-day duties. Researchers of Project 10.1 will work directly with the GBRMPA, DEEDI, GBRF, DERM, industry and community to develop world-class social and economic research that will directly facilitate the management of the Great Barrier Reef.

Our recent four-year MTSRF project demonstrated significant export of larvae of the inshore coral trout species (Plectropomus maculatus) from existing no-take marine reserves (green zones) in the Keppel Island group on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). In addition, no-take reserves were shown to make a disproportionately large contribution to recruitment in fished areas (blue zones) at this location.

Spatial zoning for multiple-use is the cornerstone of management for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP). Multiple-use zoning was first implemented widely in the GBRMP in the late 1980s and this original zoning plan was in place until 2004, when the marine park was completely rezoned under the Representative Areas Program (RAP).

This project proposes to provide information and tools to enable scientists and management agencies to predict and limit the impacts of extreme climatic events on Australia’s biodiversity.  It aims to determine the exposure, sensitivity and vulnerability of Wet Tropics biodiversity to climatic extremes, and assess contemporary and future impacts.

Invasive species management in the Wet Tropics is currently driven by a species-led prioritisation approach, as are weed and pest animal management activities globally. However, land managers in the region are increasingly recognising the necessity for regional-scale population prioritisation tools that incorporate the complexity of ecological processes of invasive species spread and establishment and take account of the values and assets in the landscape.

Rainforests are generally thought of as being highly susceptible to damage by fire, and for many Southeast Asian and Amazonian rainforests this is indeed the case. However, Australian rainforests have persisted for millennia in an environment where fire is common, and repeated contractions into refugia and subsequent expansions during glacial cycles (Hilbert et al. 2007) means that extant rainforest taxa have survived frequent exposure to fire.