ORCID Profile
0000-0001-9672-9135
Current Organisation
The University of Auckland
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In Research Link Australia (RLA), "Research Topics" refer to ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes. These topics are either sourced from ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes listed in researchers' related grants or generated by a large language model (LLM) based on their publications.
Terrestrial Ecology | Quaternary Environments | Wildlife and Habitat Management | Ecology | Environmental Science and Management | Invasive Species Ecology | Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience | Terrestrial Ecology | Life Histories (Incl. Population Ecology) | Archaeological Science | Conservation And Biodiversity | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Archaeology |
Control of Animal Pests, Diseases and Exotic Species in Forest and Woodlands Environments | Effects of Climate Change and Variability on Australia (excl. Social Impacts) | Understanding Australia's Past | Living resources (flora and fauna) | Biological sciences | Integrated (ecosystem) assessment and management | Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity at Regional or Larger Scales | Forest and Woodlands Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 06-2010
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 12-2020
DOI: 10.1111/ECOG.04917
Publisher: Authorea, Inc.
Date: 28-04-2023
DOI: 10.22541/AU.168268191.12497530/V1
Abstract: Predicting species’ potential distributions and niches requires multi-scale data encompassing the past and present. Increasingly, researchers have advocated using historical contexts to inform ecological niche models (ENMs). Two key sources of past distributions are fossils and historical records. Fossils are subject to s ling and taphonomy biases but can offer insights into the temporal dynamics over millennia. Historical records are filtered by human perceptions and biases and have a shorter temporal range but compared to fossils provide different contextual information from a broader range of habitats. New Zealand has a relatively short history of human occupation and rich fossil archives and historical literature. Approximately 25% of the world’s seabirds, nearly half of which are endemic, breed in New Zealand. Since human arrival in New Zealand, many seabird populations have declined in numbers and breeding ranges, primarily due to introduced mammalian predators. Here, we explored the ecological niche space for breeding colonies of three size groups of burrowing procellariiforms using four admixtures of locational records (fossil bones, fossil bones + historical observations, historical observations, and post-1990 observational records). We fitted ENMs using the maximum entropy algorithm and calculated niche metrics. For all groups, the breeding niche space captured separately by the fossils and historical data had low overlap with each other and reflected different environmental aspects. The combined fossil + historic datasets predicted a niche that overlapped the post-1990 observed niche. Moreover, the combination of the fossil and historic datasets demonstrated that breeding grounds, now restricted mainly to predator-free settings, were once more widespread across New Zealand. We show that historical and fossil datasets complement each other mitigating biases unique to either dataset. Together, such records can provide critical insights into the historical drivers of species range contractions, contextualising current ecosystems.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 04-04-2017
DOI: 10.1111/JBI.12950
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 29-01-2013
DOI: 10.1111/GEB.12038
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 14-08-2020
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 13-04-2020
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 04-09-2022
Abstract: Conservation decision makers must negotiate social and technical complexities to achieve desired bio ersity outcomes. Quantitative models can inform decision making, by evaluating and predicting management outcomes, so that comparisons can be made between alternative courses of action. However, whether a proposed action is appropriate for implementation, regardless of its contribution to management outcomes, also requires consideration. Existing quantitative models have yet to fully incorporate the suitability of proposed management actions, which hinders their ability to inform decision making. We used gradient boosted decision trees – a machine‐learning technique – to determine the suitability of alternative management actions available to a bio ersity conservation programme. We demonstrate our approach using the Predator Free 2050 programme – a large and complex conservation initiative that seeks to eradicate selected invasive vertebrates from the entirety of New Zealand by 2050. We created a nationally contiguous network of management tools to suppress populations of invasive species across the entire country. We then used our suitability predictions to explore three scenarios for selecting invasive species management tools, based on maximising (a) implementation probability, (b) humaneness and (c) cost‐savings. Our models highlighted that an interplay of factors influence where management tools can potentially be implemented. Our management scenarios revealed what different contiguous management networks could look like for New Zealand over the next 10–15 years as an interim step to achieving Predator Free 2050. Each scenario differed in the tools selected for implementation in different places and in the overall economic costs associated with creating a contiguous management network. Some locations were identified as unsuitable for any existing management tools, indicating that future transformative technologies may be required to create a contiguous network. Synthesis and applications . Conservation decision making must not only consider bio ersity outcomes but also whether selected management actions are appropriate in the first place. Here, we used machine‐learning techniques to determine the suitability of competing managements actions that are proposed to meet bio ersity objectives. Our approach provides an objective, transparent and reproducible framework to determine the suitability of actions at sites across large spatial extents, under complex social and technical constraints.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 19-10-2018
DOI: 10.1038/S41467-018-06788-9
Abstract: Increasing evidence indicates that forest disturbances are changing in response to global change, yet local variability in disturbance remains high. We quantified this considerable variability and analyzed whether recent disturbance episodes around the globe were consistently driven by climate, and if human influence modulates patterns of forest disturbance. We combined remote sensing data on recent (2001–2014) disturbances with in-depth local information for 50 protected landscapes and their surroundings across the temperate biome. Disturbance patterns are highly variable, and shaped by variation in disturbance agents and traits of prevailing tree species. However, high disturbance activity is consistently linked to warmer and drier than average conditions across the globe. Disturbances in protected areas are smaller and more complex in shape compared to their surroundings affected by human land use. This signal disappears in areas with high recent natural disturbance activity, underlining the potential of climate-mediated disturbance to transform forest landscapes.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 29-01-2008
DOI: 10.3170/2008-8-18441
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 08-10-2019
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 11-06-2020
DOI: 10.1111/NPH.16651
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 30-03-2006
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 30-09-2019
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 09-2002
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 12-12-2014
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 25-09-2017
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2015
DOI: 10.1016/J.TREE.2015.03.005
Abstract: Alternative stable-state theory (ASS) is widely accepted as explaining landscape-level vegetation dynamics, such as switches between forest and grassland. This theory argues that webs of feedbacks stabilise vegetation composition and structure, and that abrupt state shifts can occur if stabilising feedbacks are weakened. However, it is difficult to identify stabilising feedback loops and the disturbance thresholds beyond which state changes occur. Here, we argue that doing this requires a synthetic approach blending observation, experimentation, simulation, conceptual models, and narratives. Using forest boundaries and large mammal extinctions, we illustrate how a multifaceted research program can advance understanding of feedback-driven ecosystem change. Our integrative approach has applicability to other complex macroecological systems controlled by numerous feedbacks where controlled experimentation is impossible.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2002
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 29-05-2013
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 09-2022
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 27-09-2012
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 11-11-2019
Publisher: Research Square Platform LLC
Date: 12-09-2023
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 05-10-2010
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2014
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2022
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 07-2003
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 28-01-2009
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 06-06-2013
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 08-04-2013
DOI: 10.1111/AEC.12045
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 11-07-2015
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 2006
DOI: 10.1191/0309133306PP469RA
Abstract: Because of the spatiotemporal scales involved and the logistical constraints in collecting landscape-level data, spatially explicit simulation models have become important tools in ecological and biogeographical studies conducted over broad extents. Here we review the methods used and some of the applications of landscape-level models of succession and disturbance dynamics. Mechanistic and stochastic models are compared and contrasted and the development, over the last 15 years, of spatial landscape models of ecological change is discussed. Coarse-grained spatial landscape models are compared with finer-grained in idual-based approaches (eg, forest gap models). Management and monitoring applications of landscape models are considered alongside a discussion of the appropriate use of models in this context. A key area where spatial landscape models of the type described here need to develop is improved integration with the social sciences - both in terms of the parameters and the processes that the models incorporate. Finally issues related to scale and scaling are outlined and, in particular, the utility of methods for linking ecological models operating at disparate scales (eg, forest gap models versus landscape models) is examined.
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 10-02-2023
DOI: 10.1101/2023.02.09.526923
Abstract: The drivers and dynamics of initial human migrations across in idual islands and archipelagos are poorly understood, affecting assessments of human-modification of island bio ersity. Here, we describe and test a process-explicit approach for reconstructing human arrival and expansion on islands, which combines archaeological and climate records with high-resolution spatial population models. Using Polynesian colonisation of New Zealand as an ex le, we show that our new method can generate information crucial for assessing how humans affected bio ersity on islands. The transition of islands from prehuman to human dominated ecosystems has typically been assessed by comparing bio ersity before and after time of first arrival, without considering the potential importance of the spatiotemporal dynamics of the human expansion event. Our new approach, which uses pattern-oriented modelling methods to combine inferences of human colonisation dynamics from dated archaeological material with spatially explicit population models, produces validated reconstructions of the pattern and pace of human migration across islands at high spatiotemporal resolutions. From these reconstructions, demographic and environmental drivers of human colonization can be identified, and the role that people had on bio ersity established. Using this technique, we show that closely reconciling inferences of Polynesian colonisation of New Zealand requires there to have been a single founding population of approximately 500 people, arriving between 1233 and 1257 AD, settling multiple areas, and expanding quickly over both North and South islands. The resultant maps of Māori colonisation dynamics provide new opportunities to better determine how human activities transformed bio ersity of New Zealand in space and time. Process-explicit models can reconstruct human migration across large islands, producing validated, high resolution spatiotemporal projections of human occupancy and abundance that account for dispersal and population dynamics. This modelling framework should prove effective across any islands and archipelagos where climate and archaeological records are available.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2008
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 05-06-2016
Abstract: Fire positively and negatively affects food webs across all trophic levels and guilds and influences a range of ecological processes that reinforce fire regimes, such as nutrient cycling and soil development, plant regeneration and growth, plant community assembly and dynamics, herbivory and predation. Thus we argue that rather than merely describing spatio-temporal patterns of fire regimes, pyro ersity must be understood in terms of feedbacks between fire regimes, bio ersity and ecological processes. Humans shape pyro ersity both directly, by manipulating the intensity, severity, frequency and extent of fires, and indirectly, by influencing the abundance and distribution of various trophic guilds through hunting and husbandry of animals, and introduction and cultivation of plant species. Conceptualizing landscape fire as deeply embedded in food webs suggests that the restoration of degraded ecosystems requires the simultaneous careful management of fire regimes and native and invasive plants and animals, and may include introducing new vertebrates to compensate for extinctions that occurred in the recent and more distant past. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The interaction of fire and mankind’.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 04-09-2023
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 05-04-2023
DOI: 10.1111/NPH.18905
Abstract: Plant flammability is an important driver of wildfires, and flammability itself is determined by several plant functional traits. While many plant traits are influenced by climatic conditions, the interaction between climatic conditions and plant flammability has rarely been investigated. Here, we explored the relationships among climatic conditions, shoot‐level flammability components, and flammability‐related functional traits for 186 plant species from fire‐prone and nonfire‐prone habitats. For species originating from nonfire‐prone habitats, those from warmer areas tended to have lower shoot moisture content and larger leaves, and had higher shoot flammability with higher ignitibility, combustibility, and sustainability. Plants in wetter areas tended to have lower shoot flammability with lower combustibility and sustainability due to higher shoot moisture contents. In fire‐prone habitats, shoot flammability was not significantly related to any climatic factor. Our study suggests that for species originating in nonfire‐prone habitats, climatic conditions have influenced plant flammability by shifting flammability‐related functional traits, including leaf size and shoot moisture content. Climate does not predict shoot flammability in species from fire‐prone habitats here, fire regimes may have an important role in shaping plant flammability. Understanding these nuances in the determinants of plant flammability is important in an increasingly fire‐prone world.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 28-04-2010
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2015
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2007
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 13-01-2010
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 08-2010
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 27-08-2009
Start Date: 10-2018
End Date: 10-2023
Amount: $401,629.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2014
End Date: 12-2016
Amount: $365,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2003
End Date: 12-2009
Amount: $475,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded Activity