Rehabilitating Degraded Frontage Soils in Tropical North Queensland

The extensive tropical grasslands of north Queensland are grazed by beef cattle and provide a significant proportion of the water flowing into the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) lagoon. Soil sediments and nutrients eroding from the grazing lands of the Burdekin and Fitzroy catchments in north-east Queensland contributes to reduced water quality in the GBR lagoon. Degraded and eroded D-condition bare areas and eroding gullies in grazing lands provide a disproportionate amount of soil and nutrient losses from predominately native pasture grasslands used for cattle grazing. Rehabilitating these degraded areas will help improve water quality flowing onto the reef. Rehabilitation methods were evaluated on three soil types on a degraded creek frontage in the Burdekin River catchment of north Queensland over the 2011-2012 summer. These bare patches occur widely across the two catchments and consistently degraded sites have been identified by 24 years of satellite imagery. The objectives of this study were to identify mechanical methods and management practices for regenerating these bare patches. This will assist landholders in returning unproductive land into useful grazing pastures and will provide benefits to the wider community by improving water quality from grazing lands that enters the GBR lagoon

Impacts of rehabilitating degraded lands on soil health, pastures, runoff, erosion, nutrient and sediment movement. Part I: Rehabilitation methodologies to improve water quality flowing from grazing lands onto the Great Barrier Reef.

The project RRRD.024 investigated the potential to mechanically rehabilitate degraded, bare, D-condition grazing lands to improved condition in the Burdekin and Fitzroy River catchments of north-east Queensland. With successful rehabilitation there will be increased pasture health and productivity which will reduce water, sediment and nutrient runoff, with the aim of improving the quality of water flowing into the Great Barrier Reef lagoon from grazing land. There were six set objectives of the study and a three-way research approach was developed to identify and quantify mechanical rehabilitation information for these objectives. Seven key findings were identified from the study. Summary of seven key findings The success of rehabilitation of D-condition, severely eroded grazing lands was highly correlated to seven key aspects: 1. a high degree of mechanical disturbance (intervention) is required (deep ripping, blade ploughing or, adding mulch after heavy disturbance) to increase water holding and infiltration: disturbance includes overland water flow control measures 2. selecting the most suitable and responsive soil types (non-sodic clays, clay-loams and loams) 3. sowing well-adapted pasture species (tropical grasses and legume cultivars) 4. long-term total grazing control to allow for rainfall-dependent pasture establishment, seeding and spread over the first 3-7 years, depending on rainfall 5. conduct mechanical disturbance and seeding rehabilitation programs in years of predicted above average seasonal rainfall conditions (la Niña years preferably) 6. start rehabilitation before all topsoil is lost, and exposing more serious chemical and physical constraints to pasture development; and 7. plan and monitor grazing management strategies early to prevent the development and spread of bare D-condition areas by maintaining healthy soils and pastures. Grazing land management training is desirable

Weight loss is coupled with improvements to affective state in obese participants engaged in behavior change therapy based on incremental, self-selected “Small Changes”

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of a group behavior change intervention involving self-selected, contextualized, and mediated goal setting on anthropometric, affective, and dietary markers of health. It was hypothesized that the intervention would elicit changes consistent with accepted health recommendations for obese individuals. A rolling program of 12-week “Small Changes” interventions during 24 months recruited 71 participants; each program accommodated 10 to 13 adults (body mass index [BMI] ≥30 kg/m2). Fifty-eight participants completed Small Changes. Repeated measures were made at baseline, 6 and 12 weeks. Anthropometric measures included height and weight (to calculate BMI), body composition, waist circumference, and blood pressure. Affective state was monitored using relevant validated questionnaires. Dietary assessment used 3-day household measures food diaries with Schofield equations to monitor underreporting. Relevant blood measures were recorded throughout. Across the measurement period, Small Changes elicited a significant reduction in body weight (baseline, 102.95 ± 15.47 vs 12 weeks 100.09 ± 16.01 kg, P < .0005), coupled with associated significant improvements in BMI, body fat percentage, and waist circumference measures. There were additional significant positive changes in measures of affective state including general well-being (baseline, 58.92 ± 21.22 vs 12 weeks 78.04 ± 14.60, P < .0005) and total mood disturbance (baseline, 31.19 ± 34.03 vs 12 weeks 2.67 ± 24.96, P < .0005). Dietary changes that occurred were largely consistent with evidenced-based recommendations for weight management and included significant reductions in total energy intake and in fat and saturated fat as a proportion of energy. The Small Changes approach can elicit a range of health-orientated benefits for obese participants, and although further work is needed to ascertain the longevity of such effects, the outcomes from Small Changes are likely to help inform health professionals when framing the future of weight management. Long-term follow-up of Small Changes is warranted

Long run equilibrium estimation and inference: a non-parametric application

Phillips (1988a) has demonstrated that the long run parameters of a continuous time error correction model (ECM) involving nonstationary variables can be estimated from a corresponding discrete time ECM. He suggests Hannan efficient and band spectral frequency domain procedures for estimation and inference, anticipating they would provide significant advantages over the parametric methods traditionally used for continuous time models. A further advantage of Phillips' proposed methodology is that conventional asymptotic chisquared hypothesis testing can be carried out. This paper provides an early successful application of that methodology, using Australian consumption and income data. The spectral regression estimates are relatively straight forward to compute, with only a few iterations being required. The spectral estimates are not sensitive to alternative initial estimates. The application also highlights the potential importance of non-parametric estimators. Empirically, the long run consumption function estimates obtained are sufficiently realistic for it to be worthwhile exploring conditional short run dynamic relations and other macroeconomic data sets. Our hypothesis testing procedures are consistent across the aggregate and disaggregated data sets used, and between the unit root and cointegration stages of the investigation. A surprising result is that the null of no cointegration between aggregate real consumption and household disposable income cannot be rejected

Pasture recovery, land condition and some other observations after the monsoon flooding, chill event in north-west Queensland in Jan-Mar 2019

Monsoonal flooding rains to 800 mm across north-west Queensland during late January and early February 2019 resulted in the inundation of hundreds of thousands of hectares of grazing land. Pastures of the Mitchell Grass Downs and the Gulf Plains that support cattle production were impacted by the rain event, and particularly so, because the land had just suffered a prolonged drought of 5-7 years. An area of some 13M hectares were affected and an estimated 0.5M head of cattle were lost from cold, wet wind exposure and flooding. The immediate post-flood assessment, of pasture reported in this document, is a record that informs agricultural practices and forms an historical baseline, for future research of ways to better understand and implement best management practices, in the tropical landscape of north-west Queensland in northern Australia