News
Earth laid bare
Enhanced data on soil and exposed rock for the entire Australian continent are now openly available, with visualisations coming soon. Using innovative techniques to ‘see-through’ vegetation and analyse the land’s surface like never before, the new Barest Earth data are set to enable improved soil, lithological, geochemical and environmental modelling at home and abroad. Products tailored specifically for state-scale analyses are also downloadable at multiple resolutions.
Centre Spotlight: Harry Butler Institute
Our first spotlight of the year is on Murdoch University’s Harry Butler Institute, and its research into biosecurity, terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, energy, waste and much more. Read on to meet the researchers who are helping Australia prepare for a fierier future and provide much-needed guidance on mine closure and relinquishment.
Forests are nature’s shock-absorbers
A recently released study using TERN is calling attention to the remarkably protective role forests and wetlands play in lessening the impacts of extreme weather on natural and modified landscapes. The research uses an innovative new method to measure the ability of different vegetation types across global biomes to buffer temperature extremes. The method also provides managers with a tool to evaluate the threat to biodiversity of such extremes.
Monitoring Australia’s life-sustaining ‘Critical Zone’ resources
A consortium of Australian universities has secured $1.2M of Australian Government funding to help create a network of Critical Zone Observatories (CZO) across Australia. The funding will enable research into Australia’s outer skin—from treetop to bedrock, where water, atmosphere, ecosystems, soil and rock interact—to better understand and manage the availability of its life-sustaining resources.
Global Ecosystem Research Infrastructure (GERI) agreement signed
The managing institutions that operate six different continental-scale ecosystem observing infrastructures, from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and North America (two from Europe), signed a landmark Memorandum of Understanding, expressly committing to the development of the first-ever Global Ecosystem Research Infrastructure (GERI).
TERN welcomes new Advisory Board Chair, Hugh Possingham FAA
TERN Australia is pleased to announce that Professor Hugh Possingham FAA is the new Chair of its TERN Advisory Board.
STEM Superstar at TERN
TERN’s Dr Samantha Munroe has been named among Australia’s official Superstars of STEM for 2021-2022. Congratulations to Sam from everyone at TERN! We’re proud to have a STEM Superstar within Australia’s national land ecosystem observatory.
Centre Spotlight: Global Ecology Laboratory
This edition we’re at the Global Ecology Laboratory learning about their ecological research, that has a particular focus on palaeo-ecological systems and forecasting future ecosystems.
Researcher opportunity: new ausplotsR is available now!
Need to quickly map sites and graph things like fractional vegetation cover or relative cover of plant growth forms for multiple plots? These are all possible with the new and updated version of TERN’s ausplotsR package, which also provides free and instant access to a decade of soil and vegetation data collected at over 780 environmental monitoring sites across Australia.
Site of the Month: Calperum Mallee SuperSite
This month’s site feature has us travelling into red dirt country again – to TERN’s Calperum Mallee SuperSite in the Riverland of South Australia. Over its 10-year lifetime, the site’s infrastructure has monitored ecosystem processes that shed light on how Australia’s widespread vegetation called Mallee is able to survive in such hot, dry, fire-prone conditions.
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