A detailed synthesis on understanding and predicting Australian ecosystem responses to climate change and extreme variability has just been published in a new review of research using NCRIS-enabled TERN environmental research infrastructure.
The paper, published in late August 2019 in the journal Environmental Research Letters, reviews ecosystem responses to fire and aridity, followed by ecosystem responses to Australia’s highly variable modern climate regime.
Ecosystem responses to climate extremes are explored for both an extremely wet period and a dry extreme, including drought and heatwave. It also includes a section on ecosystem responses to climate change, the most recent of forces to affect ecosystems in Australia and globally.
The paper concludes by highlighting the value of environmental research infrastructure (RI) and reiterating the urgent need for enhanced environmental information from remote Australian landscape research for improved environmental change research and reporting.
“Environmental RIs create the opportunity for identifying and evaluating the key drivers of ecosystem change by allowing researchers to observe state-changing events such as heatwaves, floods or droughts in locations which might be otherwise inaccessible.”
- The paper can be openly-accessed here: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab33cb
- Citation: Cleverly J, Eamus D, Edwards W, Grant M, Grundy MJ, Held A, Karan M, Lowe AJ, Prober SM, Sparrow B, Morris B. 2019. TERN, Australia's Land Observatory: addressing the global challenge of forecasting ecosystem responses to climate variability and change. Environmental Research Letters 14:095004. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab33cb.
