Integrating climate adaptation into rainforest restoration plantings. This project aims to investigate the impact of within species adaptation to climate on restoratoin success in the Australian Wet Tropics. For a suite of six species of tropical tree frequently employed in rainforest restoration plantings in northeast Queensland, this project aims to test the hypothesis that collecting seed from populations in similar ecoclimatic settings to the planting site will result in superior seedling gr ....Integrating climate adaptation into rainforest restoration plantings. This project aims to investigate the impact of within species adaptation to climate on restoratoin success in the Australian Wet Tropics. For a suite of six species of tropical tree frequently employed in rainforest restoration plantings in northeast Queensland, this project aims to test the hypothesis that collecting seed from populations in similar ecoclimatic settings to the planting site will result in superior seedling growth and survival. The expected outcome is to provide practical advice to restoration practitioners about the importance of matching the provenance of seed source to planting sites, and opportunities for selecting provenances pre-adapted to predicted future climatic conditions at planting sites.Read moreRead less
Rhizosphere mediation of soil greenhouse gas fluxes with climate change. Increasingly extreme heat waves, droughts and floods contribute major uncertainties in predicting natural land-based climate change mitigation. This project will quantify current and future greenhouse gas absorption in a managed grassland ecosystem, and the new knowledge will contribute to carbon emissions offsets in climate change accounting schemes. We will conduct this research using a manipulative field experiment, cont ....Rhizosphere mediation of soil greenhouse gas fluxes with climate change. Increasingly extreme heat waves, droughts and floods contribute major uncertainties in predicting natural land-based climate change mitigation. This project will quantify current and future greenhouse gas absorption in a managed grassland ecosystem, and the new knowledge will contribute to carbon emissions offsets in climate change accounting schemes. We will conduct this research using a manipulative field experiment, controlled laboratory incubations, microbial gene analysis and mechanistic modelling to provide new insights into future potential climate change mitigation by soils.Read moreRead less
Predicting the consequences of drought-induced mortality for tree species in a changing climate. Tree mortality will be a dramatic manifestation of climate change as drought intensifies. A pre-existing record of mortality after recent drought in Eucalyptus woodland defines the moisture sensitivity of tree species and will be related to their functional traits, population dynamics and geography. This analysis will search for generalised characters that define the species that will be most suscept ....Predicting the consequences of drought-induced mortality for tree species in a changing climate. Tree mortality will be a dramatic manifestation of climate change as drought intensifies. A pre-existing record of mortality after recent drought in Eucalyptus woodland defines the moisture sensitivity of tree species and will be related to their functional traits, population dynamics and geography. This analysis will search for generalised characters that define the species that will be most susceptible to drought and will identify how future exaggerated drought will reorganise forest communities. The findings will contribute to understanding the vulnerability and resilience of our natural ecosystems with a changing climate.Read moreRead less
Diversity maintenance in patchy environments. This project aims to advance understanding of species coexistence and diversity maintenance in complex natural environments. Though diversity varies across patchy natural and human-created environments, the mechanistic drivers of these patterns remain poorly understood. This knowledge gap limits our ability to predict and manage responses of natural communities to environmental changes. Using data from threatened Western Australian wildflower communi ....Diversity maintenance in patchy environments. This project aims to advance understanding of species coexistence and diversity maintenance in complex natural environments. Though diversity varies across patchy natural and human-created environments, the mechanistic drivers of these patterns remain poorly understood. This knowledge gap limits our ability to predict and manage responses of natural communities to environmental changes. Using data from threatened Western Australian wildflower communities and novel ecological models of species coexistence, the project aims to deliver a mechanistic understanding of biological diversity, and provide fundamental knowledge needed to improve ecosystem management and restoration outcomes across Australia and globally.Read moreRead less
ARC Australia-New Zealand Research Network for Vegetation Function. Plant species vary widely in quantitative functional traits, and in their relations to climate, soils and geography. Global generalizations are emerging. Vegetation Function network will reach from plant function into genomics and crop breeding, into palaeoecology and vegetation history, into landscape management for carbon, water and salinity outcomes, into forecasting future ecosystems under global change, and into phylogeny, ....ARC Australia-New Zealand Research Network for Vegetation Function. Plant species vary widely in quantitative functional traits, and in their relations to climate, soils and geography. Global generalizations are emerging. Vegetation Function network will reach from plant function into genomics and crop breeding, into palaeoecology and vegetation history, into landscape management for carbon, water and salinity outcomes, into forecasting future ecosystems under global change, and into phylogeny, ecoinformatics and evolutionary theory. Across this span, working groups will target nine identified opportunities for breakthrough research. Each research target needs input from two or more disciplines. Together, the nine targets link across disciplines, as a network that spans from genomic to planetary scales.Read moreRead less
Will stomatal responses to humidity and carbon dioxide constrain tropical forest productivity as atmospheric carbon dioxide rises? This project will investigate two physiological processes that will partly determine growth responses of tropical forest trees to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide. The project will produce equations summarising physiological responses that can be incorporated into process-based models of tropical forest productivity.
Reading the isotopic archive: carbon and oxygen stable isotope ratios as recorders of plant physiological processes. This project will investigate how plant physiological processes are reflected in stable isotope ratios of carbon and oxygen in plant tissues. Results will contribute towards a mechanistic understanding of the processes that cause isotopic modifications, thereby enabling an improved interpretation of naturally occurring stable isotope signals.
How does your garden grow? Scaling functional traits to whole-plant growth. Understanding how the traits of leaves and stems influence plant growth is important because plant growth drives emergent ecosystem properties such as rates of water use and carbon and nitrogen cycling. The project will build a new understanding of trait-growth relationships, focusing on species from four Australian forest types.