Institutional impediments to conservation of freshwater dependent ecosystems.

When freshwater resources become scarce there is a trade-off between human resource demands and environmental sustainability. The cost of conserving freshwater ecosystems can potentially be reduced by implementing institutional reforms that endow environmental water managers with a permanent water entitlement and the capacity to store, trade and release water. Australia's Murray Darling Basin Plan (MDBP) includes one of the world's most ambitious programs to recover water for the environment, supported by institutional reforms that allow environmental water managers to operate in water markets.

Using measured stocks of biomass and litter carbon to constrain modelled estimates of sequestration of soil organic carbon under contrasting mixed-species environmental plantings.

Reforestation of agricultural land with mixed-species environmental plantings of native trees and shrubs contributes to abatement of greenhouse gas emissions through sequestration of carbon, and to landscape remediation and biodiversity enhancement. Although accumulation of carbon in biomass is relatively well understood, less is known about associated changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) following different types of reforestation. Direct measurement of SOC may not be cost effective where rates of SOC sequestration are relatively small and/or highly spatially-variable, thereby requiring intensive sampling.

Rapid prediction of particulate, humus and resistant fractions of soil organic carbon in reforested lands using infrared spectroscopy.

Reforestation of agricultural lands with mixed-species environmental plantings can effectively sequester C. While accurate and efficient methods for predicting soil organic C content and composition have recently been developed for soils under agricultural land uses, such methods under forested land uses are currently lacking. This study aimed to develop a method using infrared spectroscopy for accurately predicting total organic C (TOC) and its fractions (particulate, POC; humus, HOC; and resistant, ROC organic C) in soils under environmental plantings.

A bust but no boom: responses of floodplain bird assemblages during and after prolonged drought.

Climate change alters the frequency and severity of extreme events, such as drought. Such events will be increasingly important in shaping communities as climate change intensifies. The ability of species to withstand extreme events (resistance) and to recover once adverse conditions abate (resilience) will determine their persistence.

Reforestation with native mixed-species plantings in a temperate continental climate effectively sequesters and stabilizes carbon within decades.

Reforestation has large potential for mitigating climate change through carbon sequestration. Native mixed-species plantings have a higher potential to reverse biodiversity loss than do plantations of production species, but there are few data on their capacity to store carbon. A chronosequence (5-45 years) of 36 native mixed-species plantings, paired with adjacent pastures, was measured to investigate changes to stocks among C pools following reforestation of agricultural land in the medium rainfall zone (400-800 mm yr(-1)) of temperate Australia.

Relating demographic characteristics of a small mammal to remotely sensed forest-stand condition.

Many ecological systems around the world are changing rapidly in response to direct (land-use change) and indirect (climate change) human actions. We need tools to assess dynamically, and over appropriate management scales, condition of ecosystems and their responses to potential mitigation of pressures. Using a validated model, we determined whether stand condition of floodplain forests is related to densities of a small mammal (a carnivorous marsupial, Antechinus flavipes) in 60,000 ha of extant river red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) forests in south-eastern Australia in 2004, 2005 and 2011.