Project Leader and Host Organisation
Dr David Hilbert, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems
Project Description and Objectives
For detailed descriptions of the outputs for
this project for Year 4 (2009/2010) of the MTSRF Research
Programme, see the Annual Research
Plan.
Project 2.5ii.3 uses a series of sites on an
altitudinal transect and regional, existing forest plots to examine
responses at the ecosystem and species level to climate change.
This project takes advantage of existing data from twenty-five to
thirty-five years of measurements in plots maintained by CSIRO.
Most of the research in this project is at the landscape level with
a range of sites being used to provide the data for modeling. This
project will assess current and ongoing climate change impacts on
ecosystems, identify how they might adapt under predicted climate
change, identify key refugia and important landscape links,
identify how climate change might interact with other threats,
assess ecosystem resilience, and produce regional maps (projected
to year 2050) outlining likely changes to North Queensland
ecosystems given a variety of scenarios for future warming,
responses of biota and management interventions.
This project has many links with several other
MTSRF programs and projects.
Key Objectives:
-
Assessment of current and ongoing climate change impacts;
-
Identify how ecosystems might adapt under predicted climate
change, including identification of key refugia and important
landscape links, and guidelines for design of refugia to allow for
movement of organisms and persistence of gene pools;
-
Identify how climate change and its primary impacts might
interact with other threats – clearing, fragmentation, fire,
urbanisation, weeds, zoonoses, storms and land uses –
to impact on ecosystems, including identification of those
which have the greatest potential for substantial impact;
-
Identify how resilient North Queensland regional ecosystems are
and how resilience can be enhanced within scenarios of increased
climate variability; and
-
Produce regional maps (projected to appropriate temporal scales
of relevance to MTSRF end users) outlining likely changes to North
Queensland ecosystems given a variety of scenarios for future
warming, responses of biota and management interventions. The
specific climate change scenarios will be consistent with those
used by all other projects in this program. Note that Dr
Hilbert is a participant in Project 2.5ii.1 where scenarios are
being developed. The maps will be provided to all end-users
to facilitate their management planning and actions.
