Impact of climate change stressors on calcifying and non-calcifying marine life stages: predicting tipping points for persistence in a changing ocean. Australia generates considerable prosperity from its oceans with marine invertebrate resources playing a key role. These resources are at risk due to climate change. This project will study early life stages of key marine species to determine sensitivities to ocean warming and acidification and inform assessment of risk in a changing ocean.
Brown is the new green: grassland responses to drought and heat. This project aims to improve accuracy and precision in predicting the impact of water availability and heat stress on grassland function. Grassland ecosystems are important reservoirs of global biodiversity and carbon storage. Grasslands are highly sensitive to drought and heat stress, but studies recently showed that current grassland models cannot predict these responses because they do not adequately represent the key processes ....Brown is the new green: grassland responses to drought and heat. This project aims to improve accuracy and precision in predicting the impact of water availability and heat stress on grassland function. Grassland ecosystems are important reservoirs of global biodiversity and carbon storage. Grasslands are highly sensitive to drought and heat stress, but studies recently showed that current grassland models cannot predict these responses because they do not adequately represent the key processes of physiological drought tolerance, leaf browning, and species traits. This project will collect targeted data sets in order to develop and test model representations of these key processes. This will provide significant benefits, such as greatly increasing capacity to predict the impact of drought and heat stress on grasslands, at scales ranging from field to globe.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE120102580
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
Water and carbon stable isotope exchange between the biosphere and atmosphere. Understanding how climatic factors affect ecosystem carbon dioxide and water fluxes is essential for better climate models and managements strategies. This project will use novel isotope laser spectroscopy to measure the oxygen isotope of transpired water and that of the atmosphere to examine carbon dioxide and water at both the leaf and ecosystem scale.
Biological bet hedging in a variable ocean. This project aims to investigate how the functioning of photosynthetic plankton changes as they respond to increasing environmental variation, a significant uncertainty in ocean forecasts. The project will advance knowledge about phytoplankton nutrient acquisition strategies in increasingly variable environments. Expected outcomes include improved predictions of ocean ecosystem services. This knowledge will enhance food security, assisting the fisherie ....Biological bet hedging in a variable ocean. This project aims to investigate how the functioning of photosynthetic plankton changes as they respond to increasing environmental variation, a significant uncertainty in ocean forecasts. The project will advance knowledge about phytoplankton nutrient acquisition strategies in increasingly variable environments. Expected outcomes include improved predictions of ocean ecosystem services. This knowledge will enhance food security, assisting the fisheries, aquaculture and environment sector to develop effective adaptation strategies, and thereby safeguard the social and economic wellbeing of the communities that rely on them.Read moreRead less
Developing a mechanistic basis for coral reef conservation. This project aims to provide an evidence base for coral reef management to be targeted towards regions at greatest risk, and those that have the greatest capacity for acclimation under near-future climate change. This project will undertake an innovative trans-disciplinary analysis of coral thermal tolerance and the implications for targeted coral reef conservation to mitigate the impacts of climate change across the Great Barrier Reef ....Developing a mechanistic basis for coral reef conservation. This project aims to provide an evidence base for coral reef management to be targeted towards regions at greatest risk, and those that have the greatest capacity for acclimation under near-future climate change. This project will undertake an innovative trans-disciplinary analysis of coral thermal tolerance and the implications for targeted coral reef conservation to mitigate the impacts of climate change across the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The project will provide significant benefits, by assisting in the maintenance of the goods and services (tourism, fisheries, shoreline protection) provided to Australia by the GBR.Read moreRead less
Mapping Antarctic climate change in space and time using mosses as biological proxies. This project will use polar mosses as sentinels for climate change to determine the extent to which change is already affecting Antarctica and enable development of more robust global climate models. Novel remote sensing methods will be developed to identify biodiversity most at risk from climate change thus maintaining Antarctic treaty obligations.
Understanding and reversing the habitat shifts that have endangered the broad-headed snake. Extinction rates for vertebrate species are higher in southern Australia than almost anywhere else in the world, and saving endangered taxa is critical to biodiversity conservation. To do this effectively, researchers need to understand the processes that threaten wild populations, and to develop novel solutions to those problems in close collaboration with wildlife management authorities and other stake ....Understanding and reversing the habitat shifts that have endangered the broad-headed snake. Extinction rates for vertebrate species are higher in southern Australia than almost anywhere else in the world, and saving endangered taxa is critical to biodiversity conservation. To do this effectively, researchers need to understand the processes that threaten wild populations, and to develop novel solutions to those problems in close collaboration with wildlife management authorities and other stakeholders. This project will build such an understanding and collaboration, focusing on an endangered snake species. We propose ambitious landscape-scale field experiments that will simultaneously test hypotheses on threatening processes, and restore habitat quality to reverse population declines.Read moreRead less
Resilience of eucalypts to future droughts. This project aims to examine how resilient Eucalyptus species are to future droughts by combining data synthesis, manipulative experiments and modelling. Climate change is expected to increase the frequency, magnitude and duration of future droughts, with major environmental and socio-economic consequences for Australia. Current predictive capacity is extremely limited: experiments are limited in scale and cannot capture important global change interac ....Resilience of eucalypts to future droughts. This project aims to examine how resilient Eucalyptus species are to future droughts by combining data synthesis, manipulative experiments and modelling. Climate change is expected to increase the frequency, magnitude and duration of future droughts, with major environmental and socio-economic consequences for Australia. Current predictive capacity is extremely limited: experiments are limited in scale and cannot capture important global change interactions, whilst models do not represent the functional characteristics and adaptions of eucalypts. This project will develop a strong evidence- and process-based understanding to quantify the functional behaviour of drought-adapted Eucalyptus species and leverage this insight to make future model projections.Read moreRead less
Lags and legacies: antecedent effects on grassland biomass response to carbon dioxide. This project aims to assess how past conditions influence grassland responses to the rising atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. High CO2 concentrations should stimulate productivity but in grasslands this is rarely realised because other, mostly unknown, factors constrain the response. By synthesising data from past experiments, this project aims to determine exactly why grasslands fail to realise the ....Lags and legacies: antecedent effects on grassland biomass response to carbon dioxide. This project aims to assess how past conditions influence grassland responses to the rising atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. High CO2 concentrations should stimulate productivity but in grasslands this is rarely realised because other, mostly unknown, factors constrain the response. By synthesising data from past experiments, this project aims to determine exactly why grasslands fail to realise the full productivity benefits of increased CO2 and when this will happen. This should improve predictions of carbon exchange and indicating the best direction for climate change adaptation measures.Read moreRead less
Pushing the envelope: does range size limit eucalypt tolerance to warming? This project aims to characterise the biogeographic constraints on the physiological flexibility of eucalypts to accommodate climate warming. Do temperature tolerances of diverse taxa vary predictably with native geographic range sizes and climate of origin? In addressing this question, the project expects to generate new knowledge on the comparative physiological responses of diverse eucalypt taxa to warming and heat wav ....Pushing the envelope: does range size limit eucalypt tolerance to warming? This project aims to characterise the biogeographic constraints on the physiological flexibility of eucalypts to accommodate climate warming. Do temperature tolerances of diverse taxa vary predictably with native geographic range sizes and climate of origin? In addressing this question, the project expects to generate new knowledge on the comparative physiological responses of diverse eucalypt taxa to warming and heat waves using controlled-environment studies and a unique facility at Western Sydney University for heat wave studies of large trees. Expected outcomes include an enhanced capacity to predict carbon exchange and growth responses of native trees to climate warming over large geographic scales.Read moreRead less