Native vegetation of the southern forests : south-east highlands, Australian alps, south-west Slopes, and SE Corner bioregions

The Southern Forests study area covers an area of about six million hectares of south-eastern New South Wales, south of Oberon and Kiama and east of Albury and Boorowa (latitude 33° 02’–37 ° 06’ S; longitude 146° 56’ – 147° 06’ E). The total area of existing vegetation mapped was three million hectares (3 120 400 hectares) or about 50% of the study area. Terrestrial, wetland and estuarine vegetation of the Southern Forests region were classified into 206 vegetation groups and mapped at a scale between 1: 25 000 and 1: 100 000. The classification was based on a cluster analysis of detailed field surveys of vascular plants, as well as field knowledge in the absence of field survey data. The primary classification was based on 3740 vegetation samples with full floristics cover abundance data. Additional classifications of full floristics presence-absence and tree canopy data were carried out to guide mapping in areas with few full floristic samples. The mapping of extant vegetation was carried out by tagging vegetation polygons with vegetation codes, guided by expert knowledge, using field survey data classified into vegetation groups, remote sensing, and other environmental spatial data. The mapping of pre-1750 vegetation involved tagging of soils mapping with vegetation codes at 1: 100 000 scale, guided by spatial modelling of vegetation groups using generalised additive statistical models (GAMS), and expert knowledge. Profiles of each of the vegetation groups on the CD-ROM* provide key indicator species, descriptions, statistics and lists of informative plant species. The 206 vegetation groups cover the full range of natural vegetation, including rainforests, moist eucalypt forests, dry shrub forests, grassy forests, mallee low forests, heathlands, shrublands, grasslands and wetlands. There are 138 groups of Eucalyptus forests or woodlands, 12 rainforest groups, and 46 non-forest groups. Of the 206 groups, 193 were classified and mapped in the study area. Thirteen vegetation groups were not mapped because of their small size and lack of samples, or because they fell outside the study area. Updated regional extant and pre-1750 vegetation maps of southern New South Wales have been produced in 2005, based on those originally prepared in 2000 for the southern Regional Forest Agreement (RFA). Further validation and remapping of extant vegetation over 10% of the study area has subsequently improved the quality of the vegetation map, and removed some of the errors in the original version. The revised map provides a reasonable representation of native vegetation at a scale between 1: 25 000 and 1: 100 000 across the study area. In 2005 native vegetation covers 50% of the study area. Environmental pressures on the remaining vegetation include clearing, habitat degradation from weeds and nutrification, severe droughts, changing fire regimes, and urbanisation. Grassy woodlands and forests, temperate grasslands, and coastal and riparian vegetation have been the most reduced in areal extent. Over 90% of the grassy woodlands and temperate grasslands have been lost. Conservation of the remaining vegetation in these formations is problematic because of the small, discontinuous, and degraded nature of the remaining patches of vegetation

Long-term stability of GaAs/AlAs terahertz quantum-cascade lasers

We have investigated high-performance GaAs/AlAs terahertz (THz) quantum-cascade lasers (QCLs) with respect to the long-term stability of their operating parameters. The output power of lasers that contain an additional, thick AlAs refractive-index contrast layer underneath the cascade structure decreases after three months by about 35%. The deterioration of these lasers is attributed to the oxidation processes in this contrast layer starting from the facets. However, GaAs/AlAs THz QCLs with an Al0.9Ga0.1As refractive-index contrast layer exhibit long-term stability of the operating parameters over many years even when they are exposed to atmospheric conditions. Therefore, these lasers are promising high-power radiation sources in the terahertz spectral region for commercial applications

Best practice restoration: building the evidence-base for restoring eucalypt woodlands of Southern Australia

Approximately a third of the Earth’s surface is degraded. The enormous scale of degradation has stimulated multilateral agreements with ambitious restoration targets (e.g. The Bonn Challenge aspires to restore 350 million ha by 2030). Humankind has greater awareness than ever before of the factors contributing to landscape degradation, and has developed sophisticated practices to assist in its repair. The principal management intervention used to combat the biodiversity declines associated with land degradation is restoration. However, unprecedented environmental challenges from climate change, rapid biodiversity loss, and human population pressures add to the complexity of achieving sustainable restoration outcomes. There are valid concerns that sub-optimal restoration interventions are jeopardizing outcomes, which brings into question our capacity to reach global targets. To establish a strategic approach for improving restoration practice and to promote resilient outcomes, I reviewed current restoration practices and found that the management of plant genetic resources and inconsistent monitoring of projects are key impediments to optimal restoration outcomes. I found a suitable mechanism for investigating these knowledge gaps, through embedded experiments, and subsequently established them in restoration projects. I addressed the plant genetic resource knowledge gaps by testing in situ the relationship between plant fitness and seed origin for six Myrtaceae species. I investigated plant fitness in three empirical studies that included five common garden experiments, from provenances spanning 2.5 degrees of latitude (ca. 460 km) in southern Australian eucalypt woodlands, and found sub-optimal plant performance was common. Furthermore, signals of maladaptation occurred in two of my three empirical studies. I determined that the Myrtaceae species I studied persisted in a range of climatic conditions by combining specific adaptations to aridity and acclimating to new environmental conditions via phenotypic plasticity. I confirmed that this response was strongly directional (e.g. arid to mesic), and the genetic diversity harboured in non-local provenances could be harnessed to counteract plant fitness concerns (e.g. adaptation lags due to climate or lack of connectivity due habitat fragmentation), and ultimately help to achieve more sustainable outcomes. I then explored the utility of high throughput 16S amplicon sequencing (e.g. metabarcoding soil eDNA) as an assessment tool to assist in monitoring restoration performance. I used metabarcoding of soil eDNA to assess a chronosequence of restoration and found that the process of restoration (i.e. revegetation of the native plant community) strongly impacted soil bacteria, an important functional component of the ecosystem. I observed dramatic changes of the bacterial community after eight years of revegetation, where the bacterial communities in younger sites were more similar to cleared degraded land and older restoration sites were more similar to remnant native stands. This work has identified evidence of community flux and functional recovery following restoration that would remain unrecognised through orthodox monitoring. The synthesis of this work supports the use of evidence-based approaches to iteratively improve restoration practices. Science-practice synergies will come from harvesting the knowledge of these approaches and networking the results more broadly is the most efficient mechanism to achieve best-practice restoration and resilient project outcomes.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Biololgical Sciences, 201

Urban habitat restoration provides a human health benefit through microbiome rewilding: the Microbiome Rewilding Hypothesis

Restoration aims to return ecosystem services, including the human health benefits of exposure to green space. The loss of such exposure with urbanization and industrialization has arguably contributed to an increase in human immune dysregulation. The Biodiversity and Old Friends hypotheses have described the possible mechanisms of this relationship, and suggest that reduced exposure to diverse, beneficial microorganisms can result in negative health consequences. However, it is unclear whether restoration of biodiverse habitat can reverse this effect, and what role the environmental microbiome might have in such recovery. Here, we propose the Microbiome Rewilding Hypothesis, which specifically outlines that restoring biodiverse habitats in urban green spaces can rewild the environmental microbiome to a state that enhances primary prevention of human disease. We support our hypothesis with examples from allied fields, including a case study of active restoration that reversed the degradation of the soil bacterial microbiome of a former pasture. This case study used high-throughput amplicon sequencing of environmental DNA to assess the quality of a restoration intervention in restoring the soil bacterial microbiome. The method is rapid, scalable, and standardizable, and has great potential as a monitoring tool to assess functional outcomes of green-space restoration. Evidence for the Microbiome Rewilding Hypothesis will help motivate health professionals, urban planners, and restoration practitioners to collaborate and achieve co-benefits. Co-benefits include improved human health outcomes and investment opportunities for biodiversity conservation and restoration.Jacob G. Mills, Philip Weinstein, Nicholas J.C. Gellie, Laura S. Weyrich, Andrew J. Lowe, Martin F. Bree

Traditional ecological knowledge in restoration ecology: a call to listen deeply, to engage with, and respect Indigenous voices

The United Nations heralded 2021–2030 as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. A socioecological approach to restoration has been proposed that honors the diversity in ecological landscapes and their respective cultures and peoples with the goal of repairing degraded ecosystems. Indigenous peoples are intimately interconnected with landscapes, which are under mounting pressure from anthropogenic global environmental change. Article 31 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states the rights of Indigenous peoples to maintain, protect, and control their culture and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK); however, these rights have not always been acknowledged. We are concerned that large global restoration goals will continue to promote TEK extraction that further perpetuates inequities and discrimination of Indigenous peoples. If the restoration sector wishes to partner with Indigenous communities leading TEK efforts, it needs to understand established international agreements and proactively protect intellectual property and data sovereignty rights. To illustrate a theme of ethical engagement, we present risks to TEK integrity while highlighting engagement that has successfully promoted Indigenous leadership and self‐determination. We propose that a decade of responsible and respectful restoration will be achieved only with shared principles and an ethical code of conduct for TEK partnerships. We argue that deep listening with Indigenous peoples and engagement with humility and respect needs to be the starting point. Finally, we propose an Indigenous‐led workshop to re‐imagine and re‐develop equitable ways forward for TEK partnerships in restoration, with explicit considerations for the rights, livelihoods, and leadership of Indigenous peoples

Terahertz Nondestructive Testing with Ultra-Wideband FMCW Radar

This paper presents the development, performance, integration, and implementation of a 150 GHz FMCW radar based on a homodyne harmonic mixing scheme for noncontact, nondestructive testing. This system offers high-dynamic-range measurement capabilities up to 100 dB and measurement rates up to 7.62 kHz. Such interesting characteristics make this system attractive for imaging applications or contactless sensing. Numerous samples of different materials and geometries were imaged by taking advantage of the radar’s performance. By taking into account the nonionizing capability of the system, new applicative fields such as food industry and pharmaceutical packaging were explored

High-throughput eDNA monitoring of fungi to track functional recovery in ecological restoration

Fungi are key functional components of ecosystems (e.g. decomposers, symbionts), but are rarely included in restoration monitoring programs. Many fungi occur belowground, making them difficult to observe directly, but are observable with environmental DNA (eDNA) methods. Although eDNA approaches have been proposed as ecological monitoring tools for microbial diversity, their application to restoration projects is very limited. We used eDNA metabarcoding of fungal ITS barcodes on soil collected across a 10-year restoration chronosequence to explore fungal responses to restoration. We observed a dramatic shift in the fungal community towards that of the natural fungal community after just 10 years of active native plant revegetation. Agaricomycetes and other Basidiomycota – involved in wood decay and ectomycorrhizal symbiosis – increased in rarefied sequence abundance in older restored sites. Ascomycota dominated the fungal community, but decreased in rarefied sequence abundance across the restoration chronosequence. Our results highlight eDNA metabarcoding as a useful restoration monitoring tool that allows quantification of changes in important fungal indicator groups linked with functional recovery and, being underground, are normally omitted in restoration monitoring.DongFeng Yan, Jacob G. Mills, Nicholas J.C. Gellie, Andrew Bissett, Andrew J. Lowe, Martin F. Bree

Rocketing restoration : enabling the upscaling of ecological restoration in the Anthropocene

In the 25 years during which the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) has overseen the publication of Restoration Ecology, the field has witnessed conceptual and practical advances. These have become necessary due to the scale of environmental change wrought by the increasing global human population, and associated demands for food, fiber, energy, and water. As we look to the future, and attempt to fulfill global restoration commitments and meet sustainable development goals, there is a need to reverse land degradation and biodiversity loss through upscaling ecological restoration. Here, we argue that this upscaling requires an expanded vision for restoration that explicitly accounts for people and nature. This expansion can assess success in a future-focused way and as improvements relative to a degraded socio-ecological system. We suggest that upscaling requires addressing governance, legal and ethical challenges, investing in technological and educational capacity building, bolstering the practical science necessary for restoration, encouraging adoptable packages to ensure livelihoods of local stakeholders, and promoting investment opportunities for local actors and industry. Providing SER embraces this socio-ecological vision, it is ideally placed to aid the achievement of goals and remain globally relevant. SER needs to harness and coordinate three sources of potential energy (global political commitments, the green economy, and local community engagement) to rocket restoration into the Anthropocene. With principles that can embrace flexibility and context-dependency in minimum restoration standards, SER has the potential to guide socio-ecological restoration and help realize the ultimate goal of a sustainable Earth