Webinars and events
The Queensland Herbarium hosts free public webinars, usually once a month, between 12pm and 1pm.
These are live streamed events using Microsoft Teams webinar. Stay tuned for further webinar announcements.
Email geoffrey.c.smith@des.qld.gov.au to register for a session.
12 June 2023, 12–1pm
Freshwater wetland condition monitoring in the Great Barrier Reef catchment area: design, implementation and statistical challenges and solutions
Catherine Leigh, Wetland Condition Science, DES
The vast Great Barrier Reef catchment area (GBRCA), spanning over 420,000 km², is notable for its diverse, nationally significant freshwater wetlands, many of which connect to the GBR World Heritage ecosystem. Monitoring these natural wetlands, under the government objective that their condition will improve, is undertaken by Queensland’s GBRCA Wetland Condition Monitoring Program. This presentation will outline how the Program design met challenges, such as the large spatial scale it covers and wetland access to monitor a spatially balanced set of ~240 randomly sampled wetlands on lands subject to a range of uses from mining, to cropping, grazing and conservation. Key outcomes of the Program include the release of biennial report cards, a flexible design enabling phased expansions from the GBRCA-wide scale program to incorporation of regional scale data and reporting and the ongoing participation of a wide range of landholders. The growing dataset has enabled us to report on condition, based on a suite of pressure and state indicators, since 2016 and we now using new analytical methods to model and report on trend in condition. One challenge is that logistical constraints and the voluntary nature of wetland inclusion means some wetlands originally earmarked for surveying cannot be surveyed. These ‘non-responding’ wetlands are replaced by other randomly selected wetlands that can be surveyed (i.e., ‘responding’ wetlands), resulting in a sample representing responding wetlands only, rather than all wetlands in the target subpopulation. This bias needs to be accounted for prior to analysing status of and trend in wetland condition. Solutions to deal with the non-response problem, including decisions that need to be made along the way, will be discussed.
14 August 2023, 12-1pm
Hot up top: assessing the response of vegetation in the Kosciuszko alpine area amidst a rapidly changing climate
Dr Brodie Verrall, Scientist (Threatened Species Assessments), QH&BS and Senior Research Officer, Australian National University
Alpine ecosystems are governed by low temperatures and short growing seasons, placing them among the most vulnerable to climate change. Thus, they can act as natural laboratories to investigate climate-induced ecological changes along strong environmental gradients. I utilised an array of long-term ecological monitoring techniques to understand the responses of vegetation in the largest contiguous alpine area in the Australian Alps to climate change over recent decades across varying spatial scales.