2018 Seminar Series
Wednesday, 24 October 2018 | Presented by Susan Laurance| A/prof, James Cook University
Future climate projections suggest that droughts, which already affect large expanses of tropical rainforest globally, could become more frequent and intense in the future. Elevated tree mortality is one of the most important responses to severe drought and may provoke fundamental changes in forest structure and species composition, and subsequently in ecosystem function. To address this question, we installed an in-situ drought experiment in the Daintree lowland rainforest. Our research over the last four years spans many aspects of forest ecology and ecophysiology in this lowland forest. Our preliminary research into these trophic processes has found significantly elevated levels of disease and insect attack in foliage and stems of drought-stressed plants. In situ experiments are challenging and imperfect projects but they provide a whole ecosystem perspective that is crucial in tropical forests and reinforces the need for multi-disciplinary approaches to climate change research.
Wednesday, 17 October 2018 | WTMA | Presented by Ms Leslie Shirreffs PSM, Mr Max Chappell and Ms Alicia Haines
This presentation takes us on the journey that led to the World Heritage listing, which at the time, was complex, controversial and had strong involvement of communities—both in support of and against the proposed listing. Much has changed and has been achieved over the past 30 years, but importantly, the outstanding universal values that inspired listing have been conserved.
Managing the World Heritage Area will continue to be complex, and the Authority must address myriad social, economic and environmental issues and challenges over the next thirty years and beyond. Staff at the Authority continue to work in partnership with a committed Wet Tropics community, including rainforest Aboriginal people and the research community, as a means of building a sense of ownership and sharing both the benefits and challenges of sound management.
Wednesday, 10 October 2018 | Presented by Lin Schwarzkopf | Prof, James Cook University
Public perception suggests that preserving biodiversity on multi-use land necessarily requires trade-offs with economic returns. We tested this on a long-term grazing experiment where economic returns from grazing had been measured in a replicated design for 4 different grazing strategies over 17 years. We measured vertebrate richness, abundance and community structure. Different grazing strategies had measurable effects on habitat structure and community composition of vertebrates, and richness and abundance of reptiles. Notably, reptile richness and abundance were positively correlated with economic returns from grazing, suggesting that, within the context of grazing, there was no evidence of an economic trade-off between long-term financial returns from grazing and biodiversity of reptiles. We suggest that long-term, economically sustainable grazing on unmodified pastures may not trade-off with biodiversity outcomes.
Wednesday, 3 October 2018 | Presented by Margaret Barbour|University of Sydney, School of Life and Environmental Sciences
Leaves are a nexus for the exchange of water, carbon and energy between terrestrial plants and the atmosphere. Recent technological advances in imaging and modelling allow spatially explicit 3D analysis for the first time. Coupling these developing techniques with high temporal resolution measurements of isotopologue exchange will allow long-standing questions related to plant carbon-water exchange to be addressed.
Wednesday, 19 September 2018 | Presented by Bill Laurance|Distinguished Professor & Director of TESS
We are living in the most explosive era of infrastructure expansion in human history. The most ambitious scheme is China’s Belt & Road Initiative, which will involve 7,000 planned infrastructure and extractive-industry projects that span much of the planet. Chinese President Xi Jinping promises the Belt & Road will be “green”, “low-carbon” and “sustainable”, but I argue that this is blatantly misleading. I will illustrate the harsh realities of the Belt & Road by describing the plight of the Tapanuli Orangutan, the world’s rarest great ape. I will then identify strategies to lessen the most urgent environmental and societal hazards of the global infrastructure tsunami.
Wednesday, 12 September 2018 | Presented by Carla Sgro| Monash University
Climate change threatens biodiversity, with many animals thought to be at risk of extinction. Global change will also alter the distribution and abundance of species of direct concern to human health and food security, such as disease vectors and agricultural pests. The extent to which evolution and phenotypic plasticity might mediate specie responses to climate change remains largely unknown. We have used a combination of experimental evolution and environmental manipulations to address this gap in our understanding.
Wednesday, 5 September 2018 | Presented by Andrew Balmford|Conservation of Science, University of Cambridge
Globally, agriculture is the greatest threat to biodiversity and a major contributor to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. How we choose to deal with rising human food demand will to a large degree determine the state of biodiversity and the wider environment in the 21st century.
Wednesday, 29 August 2018| Presented by Barbara Waterhouse|Australian Government Department of Agriculture and Water Resources
Australia’s uninterrupted mainland coastline and strong border biosecurity measures have led to the absence of many pests, diseases and weeds that plague agricultural production and the environment in other regions. Nevertheless, delivery of effective border biosecurity measures is increasingly challenged by the increase in global population, international mobility and trade.
Wednesday, 22 August 2018 | Presented by Stefano Lo Russo| Department of Environment, Land and Infrastructure Engineering, Italy
The planning of rational heating and cooling systems for urban and rural areas play a key role in the renewable energy development in any climatic condition. The energy sustainability depends on the annual energy request, the population density and the efficiency in heat production. Groundwater plays a crucial role in the assessment of the potentials of such alternative technologies.
Open-loop groundwater heat pumps (GWHPs) are considered one of the most energy efficient and environmentally friendly air-conditioning systems and among the best options where aquifers conditions are suitable.
Wednesday, 15 August 2018 | Presented by Brendan Mackey|Director, Griffith Climate Change Response Program
Ecosystems throughout the world are being degraded from modern developments including industrial scale land use and transport infrastructure. At the same time, we are experiencing unprecedented human-forced climate change. Together, they are leading to a break down in natural connectivity and dramatic shifts in ecosystem dynamics and species responses. Large scale connectivity conservation has been proposed as an appropriate and necessary response to these threats to ecosystem integrity and biodiversity.
Wednesday, 8 August 2018| Presented by Manu E. Saunders| University of New England, Armidale
Most crops rely on interactions between a variety of animal species to produce optimal yields, e.g. pollinators and natural enemies. Published evidence shows how agricultural landscapes can be managed to enhance the ecosystem services these animals provide and reduce environmental degradation. But broader understanding and adoption of relevant management practices is limited, largely because of disciplinary silos and communication challenges. Landscape-scale approaches to research and management are essential to increase knowledge of biodiversity and ecosystem relationships.
Wednesday, 1 August 2018 | Presented by Prof Nina Buchmann | ETH Zurich, Department of Environmental Systems Science
Forests and agroecosystems play an important role in biospheric-atmospheric gas exchange, affect and are affected by climate change, while providing many valuable ecosystem services. Plant ecophysiology is often at the core of these fluxes, and ecosystem resilience today and in the future is thus an important research question.
Wednesday, 25 July 2018 | Presented by Stephen Potts| acting Director of Science Policy and Evaluation Services in the Department of Environment and Science, Qld Government.
The Queensland Government released a review of Queensland’s biodiscovery laws in April 2018, and invited feedback from stakeholders about the recommendations and opportunities for reform. The Biodiscovery Act 2004 regulates the take and use of native biological material collected from State land or Queensland waters for the purpose of biodiscovery. The presentation will detail some of the key issues raised during the review and subsequent consultation, the next steps in the reform process, and what it all means for scientific research and commercialisation in Queensland.
Wednesday, 23 May 2018 | Presented by Prof Darren Crayn, Australian Tropical Herbarium, JCU
Studies of historical biogeography and evolutionary history are not only intellectually satisfying, but provide us with evidence for the role of range expansion, speciation, and extinction in the assembly of tropical biomes and the origins and maintenance of biodiversity generally. The knowledge gained through such work can also help determine priorities for conservation and appropriate management responses. This talk will demonstrate how improved understanding of the evolutionary history of key taxonomic groups has provided a better understanding of the origins and significance of the Australian tropical flora, and provided knowledge frameworks for the conservation of species and ecosystem processes.
Wednesday, 16 May 2018 | Presented by Dr Mark Jacobs, Department of Science, Information Technology and Innovation
Queensland is challenged with balancing the needs of development and the conservation of our environmental assets. To this end, the government is committed to an integrated scientifically robust approach to the management of Queensland’s natural resources. The Science Division within the new Queensland Department of Environment and Science provides the environmental, natural resources and climate science that supports state legislation and regulation, and the development of policy. A number of recent examples of environmental challenges across water and vegetation management and conservation will be presented and future technological advances will also be discussed in this context.
Wednesday, 9 May 2018| Presented by Peta Standley, Cape York Natural Resource Management
From February to April 2010 the Kuku Thaypan Elders Fire Management Research project conducted through their Traditional knowledge recording work with Tagalaka descendant Victor Steffensen in Cape York, extended their Indigenous led research methodologies to begin implementation of the “Threats to Native Bees (Sugarbag)” project. My role was to help document the Indigenous fire knowledge of the Elders and work alongside them in undertaking their fire research study. In undertaking the Sugarbag project I developed a methodology for mapping the native bee hives based on the knowledge of the Elders that enabled description of the Elders classification system of sugarbag or (native stingless bees) and their inter-relationship with fire management.
Wednesday, 2 May 2018 | Presented by Prof Sean Connolly, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University
Abundance patterns in ecological communities have important implications for biodiversity maintenance and ecosystem functioning. However, ecological theory has been largely unsuccessful at capturing multiple macroecological abundance patterns simultaneously. Here we propose a parsimonious model that unifies widespread ecological relationships involving local aggregation, species-abundance distributions, and species associations, and we test this model against the metacommunity structure of reef-building corals and coral reef fishes across the western and central Pacific. For both corals and fishes, the unified model simultaneously captures extremely well local species abundance distributions, inter-specific variation in the strength of spatial aggregation, patterns of community similarity, species accumulation, and regional species richness, performing far better than alternative models also examined here and in previous work on coral reefs. Our approach contributes to the development of synthetic theory for large-scale patterns of community structure in nature, and to addressing ongoing challenges in biodiversity conservation at macroecological scales.
Monday, 23 April 2018| Presented by Dr Lisa Davenport
Previous work using satellite telemetry to study the movement ecology of waterbirds in western Amazonia has shown that at least some populations of two sandbank-dependent species, the Black Skimmer (Rynchops niger) and the Orinoco Goose (Neochen jubata), undertake long-distance, annual round-trip migrations after waters rise and cover riverine beaches where they raise young. Here we compare the results from western populations with new tracking data from breeding birds tagged along the Río Javaés and Río Araguaia bordering the Araguaia National Park of Tocantins, Brazil, situated near the eastern limit of Amazonian habitats, along a transition zone between rain forest and savanna. The region is under considerable settlement pressure, with extensive soy and rice plantations rapidly covering the landscape outside of protected areas.
Wednesday, 11 April 2018| Presented by Dr Joe Fontaine, Murdoch University
The frequency of ecological disturbances is on the rise globally. These are coupled with phrases such as ‘unprecedented’ and broad concerns about the capacity of ecosystems to respond to ever increasing intensity, extent, and severity of each disturbance. When disturbances occur in quick succession or on top of one another, the resilience of populations and ecosystems may unravel. Using fire-climate feedbacks on plant populations, we have developed a conceptual model (the ‘interval squeeze’) that seeks to identify the mechanisms that may drive population declines under these circumstances, the species most vulnerable, and potential climate adaptation strategies.
Wednesday, 4 April 2018| Presented by Prof John Terborgh, Duke University and JCU
Birds and mammals have been shown to be the main dispersers of tree seeds in tropical forests around the world. Unfortunately, many of the species most crucial to seed dispersal are favoured targets of hunters. Unregulated and, especially, market hunting have depleted large-bodied seed dispersers in most tropical forests. A recent article by Peres et al. (2016) has claimed that hunting-induced loss of seed dispersal function will lead to the substitution of light-wooded for heavy-wooded tree species, resulting in a large release of CO2 to the atmosphere. Since 2002, I have led a team of investigators in a comparison of the compositional dynamics of an “empty forest” and a faunally intact forest in Amazonian Perú.
Wednesday, 21 March 2018 | Presented by Prof Zenobia Jacobs, The University of Wollongong
The timing of arrival of people in Australia is a contentious issue. The recent announcement of human arrival at least 65,000 years ago at the site of Madjedbebe in the top end of the Northern Territory has reinvigorated this debate. The site and finds have important implications for our understanding of the timing of modern human dispersal Out of Africa, as well as the technology and behaviour of the first people to enter Sahul. This seminar will provide an overview of the excavations, context and rich finds, focusing specifically on how the chronology was developed and tested for robustness, to place Madjedbebe in the broader context of modern human migration and colonisation of Sahul.
Wednesday, 14 March 2018 | Presented by Prof Elizabeth Aitken, The University of Queensland
Liz’s seminar will focus on research that her group has been undertaking on the fungal pathogen Fusarium oxysporum. This fungus, which causes vascular wilt in many crop plant species, has had particular impact on banana production both here in Queensland and elsewhere in the world and not just currently, but in the last 100 years with devastating economic and political consequences. Recent incursions of the Tropical Race 4 (TR4) strain of this fungus are causing great concern for banana producers in northern Queensland.
Wednesday, 7 March 2018 | Presented by Dr HanShe Lim, JCU
Urbanisation has resulted in a host of hydrological problems including flooding and water pollution. This seminar focuses on recent attempts to reduce and manage these problems by re-introducing natural hydrological processes back to urban areas. Some of these attempts include the construction of water-sensitive design elements such as rain gardens and green roofs as well as larger projects involving river and floodplain restoration. The talk will refer to examples from around the world, particularly with reference to the tropics, and assess the effectiveness of such attempts and its potential for implementation in Cairns.
Wednesday, 28 February 2018
Dr Alex Cheesman: Trialling Denitrifying Bioreactors in the Australian Wet Tropics
Elias Harrison Bloom: Introduced pollinators mediate breakdown in wild plant pollination
Lain Efren Pardo Vargas: Terrestrial mammals responses to oil palm dominated landscapes in Colombia
Rismita Sari: The Phylogeny of Australian Garcinia (Clusiaceae)
Wednesday, 21 February 2018 | Presented by Prof Michael Bird, JCU
In 2017, JCU, in collaboration with nine other Australian universities and eleven national and international partners, was awarded $33.75 million to develop the new ARC Centre for Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH). In this seminar, Michael will outline the research programs and aspirations of CABAH as a whole, and the role of JCU within the Centre. As an example of the cross-disciplinary nature of the research, the seminar will also present the results of a research project examining the routes by which Anatomically Modern Humans (AMHs) dispersed rapidly through Sunda, Wallacea and across much of Sahul (Australia and New Guinea joined at times of lowered sea level) by around 50,000 years ago, and the tropical environments they encountered upon arrival.