Interactions of weeds and overgrazing at Brookfield Conservation Park – How can we decouple those threat interactions?

Project description

Brookfield Conservation Park, in the semi-arid mallee of South Australia, has been a research hub for biodiversity conservation for decades. There is a rich history of ecological information since the 1950s, with many studies on wombat conservation, grazing pressure, vegetation dynamics, and links to changing rainfall patterns. Currently, Brookfield Conservation Park is under threat, with weed invasion and grazing pressure negatively impacting the plant diversity, and the keystone fauna that depend on healthy ecosystems, including the Southern Hairy Nosed Wombat. This project aims to understand how the vegetation has changed over decadal scales, whether two key drivers of change – weed invasion and herbivore grazing – are interacting to reduce vegetation condition, and whether management techniques can be applied to limit the impacts of weed invasion and/or grazing pressure and return some of the grassland and perennial plant components. Student project/s could include:

• Synthesising the long-term vegetation photo-point dataset and calibrating methods to assess change from photo-points, combined with in-field measures of vegetation cover and composition
• Investigating the seed bank of invaded versus native soils and determine to role of seed bank dynamics in the invasion process, and whether native species can be recovered from the seed bank
• Re-visiting the grazing exclosures to asses the level of grazing pressure at Brookfield, and whether this is facilitating weed invasion
• Implementing management trials of different weed control techniques in areas with contrasting areas of grazing pressure to investigate whether the two drivers are limiting vegetation recovery, and how this could be decoupled.
• Embedding some of the knowledge gained into teaching programs at Flinders University, as the second-year Biodiversity and Conservation course undertakes annual field work at Brookfield.

Co-supervisors

Dr Irene Martin-Fores Professor Rod Wells

Assumed knowledge

Some knowledge of seed bank techniques, or willingness to learn. Some knowledge of plant identification, or willingness to learn. Managing data in Excel, and willingness to learn R.

Note: You need to register interest in projects from different supervisors (not a number of projects with the one supervisor).
You must also contact each supervisor directly to discuss both the project details and your suitability to undertake the project.