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Conservation practice
- Water Information System for the Environment (WISE)
- Red list of ecosystems
- Shrub encroachment as a legacy of native mammal decline
- Foraging and habitat ecology of the yellow-tailed black-cockatoo
- Tackling prey naïveté in Australia’s threatened mammals
- Biodiversity sampling in Strzelecki Regional Reserve
- The reintroduction of locally extinct mammals: The landscape ecosystem approach
- The persistence of common wombats in road impacted environments
- Temperate highland peat swamps on sandstone
- Cumberland plain woodland restoration
- Strategic adaptive management
- Limit to climate change adaption in floodplain wetlands - Macquarie Marshes
- Managing for ecosystem change in the greater blue mountains world heritage area
- Adaptive management of Ramsar Wetlands
- Managing for biodiversity in boom and bust cycle environments
- Submission on Biodiversity Act Review
- Marine ecosystems
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Remote sensing and GIS
- Mangrove response to climatic variability
- Using radar satellite imagery to detect and monitor flooding in arid Australian wetlands
- Supporting continental retrieval of vegetation biophysical attributes
- The Injune Landscape Collaborative Project
- Tree species shifts in response to environmental change
- Regrowth mapping
- Regional biodiversity responses to climate change
- Will climate change affect the ecology of temporary lakes in Australia?
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Rivers and wetlands
- Changes to the Darling River and Menindee Lakes – past, present and future
- Lowbidgee wetlands of the Murray-Darling Basin - The Nimmie-Caira
- A stitch in time – synergistic impacts to platypus metapopulation extinction risk
- Tube fishway project
- National waterbird survey
- Eastern Australian waterbird survey
- Feather map of Australia
- Life history and dynamics of a platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) population: four decades of mark-recapture surveys
- Adequacy of environmental assessment of the proposed Macquarie River pipeline to the city of Orange
- Increasing production from inland aquaculture in Papua New Guinea for food and income security
- Aquaculture and environmental planning group
- Understanding soil-related constraints on aquaculture production in the highlands of Papua New Guinea
- Improving technologies for inland aquaculture in Papua New Guinea (ACIAR Project FIS2014062)
- Drying of ancient Thirlmere Lakes caused by human activities
- Application of GIS and remote sensing to assess sustainable mariculture and protect conservation zones
- Improving the sustainability of rice-shrimp farming systems in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam
- A SWOT analysis of Papua New Guinea’s inland fisheries and aquaculture sectors
- Carbon and floodplain biota in the Macquarie marshes
- Micro-invertebrate community dynamics and flooding in the Macquarie marshes
- Just add water? The effectiveness of environmental flows during wetland vegetation restoration
- Application of motion sensing cameras as a tool for monitoring riparian fauna
- Captive or wild?
- Brolga and Sarus crane diet comparison
- Lake Brewster pelican banding
- Aquatic invertebrate strategies for coping with drought
- Submission on Draft Lake Eyre Basin Strategic Plan
- The Menindee Lakes Water Savings Project – an example of poor decision-making
- Flow-MER
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Terrestrial ecosystems
- Post-fire recovery of threatened ecological communities
- Environment Recovery Project: Australian bushfires
- Community stability of upland swamp vegetation
- An innovative approach to maximising catchment water yield in a changing climate
- Post-fire seed production in Hakea Gibbosa
- Managing fire regimes with thresholds to save threatened flora and fauna
- Stopping the toad
- Trophic cascades in NSW North Coast forests
- Individual hunting behavior in feral cats
- Mallee Ecosystem Dynamics
- Investigating artificial waterhole utilisation and management in north-eastern Botswana
- Investigating the spatial ecology, habitat use, behaviour, and ecosystem engineering of hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), a keystone species in the Okavango Delta and Chobe River, northern Botswana
- Does overgrazing reduce ecosystem functions
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Study with us
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Postgraduate research projects
- Platypus breeding
- Maximising establishment success in reintroduced populations
- PhD scholarship saving our species - patch value, viability and resilience
- PhD scholarship – mechanics of species irruptions
- Conservation ecology of Greater bilby: survival, reproductive success and movement ecology in a breeding sanctuary in NSW
- Scientia PhD scholarship - Identifying healthy burning practices for Australia’s threatened plant species
- Scientia PhD scholarship - Ecosystem restoration through rewilding
- Platypus population health and dynamics
- Tackling prey naiveté in Australia’s endangered mammals
- Testate amoebae: a new biomarker of climate change and human impact in peatlands
- Surface water dynamics as a function of climate and river flow data
- Multisensor integration for environmental flows
- Response of northern Australian mangroves to climatic variability
- Comparative effects of extreme heat on threatened desert mammals
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- Home
- About us
-
Our research
Conservation practice
- Water Information System for the Environment (WISE)
- Red list of ecosystems
- Shrub encroachment as a legacy of native mammal decline
- Foraging and habitat ecology of the yellow-tailed black-cockatoo
- Tackling prey naïveté in Australia’s threatened mammals
- Biodiversity sampling in Strzelecki Regional Reserve
- The reintroduction of locally extinct mammals: The landscape ecosystem approach
- The persistence of common wombats in road impacted environments
- Temperate highland peat swamps on sandstone
- Cumberland plain woodland restoration
- Strategic adaptive management
- Limit to climate change adaption in floodplain wetlands - Macquarie Marshes
- Managing for ecosystem change in the greater blue mountains world heritage area
- Adaptive management of Ramsar Wetlands
- Managing for biodiversity in boom and bust cycle environments
- Submission on Biodiversity Act Review
Remote sensing and GIS
- Mangrove response to climatic variability
- Using radar satellite imagery to detect and monitor flooding in arid Australian wetlands
- Supporting continental retrieval of vegetation biophysical attributes
- The Injune Landscape Collaborative Project
- Tree species shifts in response to environmental change
- Regrowth mapping
- Regional biodiversity responses to climate change
- Will climate change affect the ecology of temporary lakes in Australia?
Rivers and wetlands
- Changes to the Darling River and Menindee Lakes – past, present and future
- Lowbidgee wetlands of the Murray-Darling Basin - The Nimmie-Caira
- A stitch in time – synergistic impacts to platypus metapopulation extinction risk
- Tube fishway project
- National waterbird survey
- Eastern Australian waterbird survey
- Feather map of Australia
- Life history and dynamics of a platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) population: four decades of mark-recapture surveys
- Adequacy of environmental assessment of the proposed Macquarie River pipeline to the city of Orange
- Increasing production from inland aquaculture in Papua New Guinea for food and income security
- Aquaculture and environmental planning group
- Understanding soil-related constraints on aquaculture production in the highlands of Papua New Guinea
- Improving technologies for inland aquaculture in Papua New Guinea (ACIAR Project FIS2014062)
- Drying of ancient Thirlmere Lakes caused by human activities
- Application of GIS and remote sensing to assess sustainable mariculture and protect conservation zones
- Improving the sustainability of rice-shrimp farming systems in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam
- A SWOT analysis of Papua New Guinea’s inland fisheries and aquaculture sectors
- Carbon and floodplain biota in the Macquarie marshes
- Micro-invertebrate community dynamics and flooding in the Macquarie marshes
- Just add water? The effectiveness of environmental flows during wetland vegetation restoration
- Application of motion sensing cameras as a tool for monitoring riparian fauna
- Captive or wild?
- Brolga and Sarus crane diet comparison
- Lake Brewster pelican banding
- Aquatic invertebrate strategies for coping with drought
- Submission on Draft Lake Eyre Basin Strategic Plan
- The Menindee Lakes Water Savings Project – an example of poor decision-making
- Flow-MER
Terrestrial ecosystems
- Post-fire recovery of threatened ecological communities
- Environment Recovery Project: Australian bushfires
- Community stability of upland swamp vegetation
- An innovative approach to maximising catchment water yield in a changing climate
- Post-fire seed production in Hakea Gibbosa
- Managing fire regimes with thresholds to save threatened flora and fauna
- Stopping the toad
- Trophic cascades in NSW North Coast forests
- Individual hunting behavior in feral cats
- Mallee Ecosystem Dynamics
- Investigating artificial waterhole utilisation and management in north-eastern Botswana
- Investigating the spatial ecology, habitat use, behaviour, and ecosystem engineering of hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), a keystone species in the Okavango Delta and Chobe River, northern Botswana
- Does overgrazing reduce ecosystem functions
-
Study with us
Postgraduate research projects
- Platypus breeding
- Maximising establishment success in reintroduced populations
- PhD scholarship saving our species - patch value, viability and resilience
- PhD scholarship – mechanics of species irruptions
- Conservation ecology of Greater bilby: survival, reproductive success and movement ecology in a breeding sanctuary in NSW
- Scientia PhD scholarship - Identifying healthy burning practices for Australia’s threatened plant species
- Scientia PhD scholarship - Ecosystem restoration through rewilding
- Platypus population health and dynamics
- Tackling prey naiveté in Australia’s endangered mammals
- Testate amoebae: a new biomarker of climate change and human impact in peatlands
- Surface water dynamics as a function of climate and river flow data
- Multisensor integration for environmental flows
- Response of northern Australian mangroves to climatic variability
- Comparative effects of extreme heat on threatened desert mammals
- Our Impact
- News
- Wild Deserts
Date: Tuesday, October 4, 2016
Project: Eastern Australian Waterbird Survey
Observer: Richard Kingsford
Once again it seems, we can say the 2016 aerial survey of waterbirds across eastern Australia is going to be different to the other 33 years that have gone before. Widespread rainfall across the Lake Eyre Basin and Murray-Darling Basin have caused considerable flooding. We will be busy – where the water goes, we survey. Unusually winter – spring rainfall has caused the flooding inland, not the summer deluges. Floods bring considerable costs to communities but they also rejuvenate the rivers, getting out onto the floodplains and triggering an amazingly complexity of ecological interactions. 2016 is a full on breeding year for the waterbirds.
Today – we head north, surveying the wetlands east of the Great Divide which fall into our 30km survey bands, spaced every 200km. We surveyed bands 4-6, in that order. First on the list were the Myall Lakes. They always seem the same. Water levels appear immutable, governed by their close connection to the sea, unlike inland wetlands. And the waterbirds were the usual - swans, pelicans and cormorants. The difference this year was that there were perhaps a dozen swan broods. It was blowing hard when we surveyed which bounces our small plane about a bit.
White streams across the surface of Myall Lakes reflect the strong winds.
Our team is pretty enthusiastic again – even though we have done this for decades. It is a beautiful day and we are in the brand spanking new plane bought by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. The new screens dazzle with their brightness and size. No more squinting at small numbers to work out latitudes and longitudes. A quick stop at Port Macquarie to refuel before we fly up a bit of the Bellinger River from its mouth.
The Bellinger River seldom has many waterbirds. Today there were less than 10 large migratory wading birds, an egret and a white ibis.
This is certainly a portent of things to come - lots of water, with waterbirds few and far between, an abundance of rich habitats for the waterbirds to spread out. In particular, the coastal birds head west on the merest sniff of widespread water inland. As expected, there weren’t many birds about on the coastal wetlands today.
Survey band 6 stretches from just north of Byron Bay all the way to south of Innamincka and Lake Eyre where we will be in less than a week, a long way from the coastal wetlands of Byron Bay. There were a few cormorants on the inlets but not much else. Excitingly, we drifted over the ocean after one of our inlet surveys, over a pod of humpback whales on their southern migration.
Mother and calf humpback whales on their way south
One large whale carved its way through the air as it breached below us. Over today, we must have seen more than 10 pods – a privilege to see these magnificent animals from on high, looking down through the clear water.
On on to the north, past the Gold Coast with its serpentine canal estates to follow the western shoreline of Stradbroke Island.
Gold coast canal estates
Contours of shallow sand reflect different hues, depending on the depth of the water. Apart from pockets of sand mining and the odd resort, much of it seems as wild as it has always been, when this was only the land of its Aboriginal peoples.
Shallow waters around Stradbroke Island