A few days ago, twelve students from ANU’s Advanced Field Studies in Functional Ecology piled into a van and headed up to Mt Kosciuszko, each with a full backpack and a question to answer. It’s the final semester of their undergraduate degrees and this trip represents everything they’ve been working toward. Over the past several weeks the students have been preparing independent ecology projects that seek to better understand how different plants and animals have evolved to function in the same environment. Through workshops and mentoring, they have each arrived at an unknown, some intriguing gap in the established knowledge that involves venturing to remote places in search of answers. They have formed hypotheses and designed field experiments, and along the way they have learned that there is often a difference between what is unknown and what can be answered. They have also learned that the ability to bridge that gap out in the field can depend on the resources they will have at hand.
In even numbered years the students venture to tropical ecosystems, but it’s an odd year, so alpine ecosystems are on the roster. This means trekking to interesting habitats at high elevations. Until a few years ago this would have significantly limited what equipment could be brought along and, by extension, which research questions could be asked. But now they have the AMRF Mobile Lab — and it’s changed everything.
Australia's Mountains: a canary in the coalmine
Understanding the ecosystem dynamics of alpine, sub-alpine, and montane ecosystems — collectively termed ‘high country’ — has never been more important.
“Climate change is more pronounced and happening more rapidly in mountainous regions,” explains Professor Adrienne Nicotra, evolutionary ecologist at the Australian National University (ANU) and Director of the Australian Mountain Research Facility (AMRF).
Adrienne’s research focusses on the capacity of plants to respond to environmental change. She is particularly interested in how this plays out in Australia’s high country because of its unique biodiversity and geography. It’s home to plants and animals found nowhere else in the world. Meanwhile, our high mountains are old and have well-developed, deep organic soils and biomass that store an enormous amount of carbon. Yet our alpine regions are smaller and lower on average than most other alpine regions in the world and this puts them in the unenviable position of being the ‘canary in the coalmine’ when it comes to climate change, says Adrienne.
The effects of warming and habitat degradation in Australia’s high country are already well documented. These include a rising number of threatened species and threatened ecological communities.
A Natural Partnership
The Australian Mountain Research Facility was established in 2022 to provide a structure for integrated research and management of Australia’s mountains.
“The idea was to bring together researchers from all the disciplines that do mountain research in order to address conservation issues,” says Adrienne.
AMRF is a monitoring and experimental facility that includes laboratory space at ANU as well as instrumentation at fixed locations across high altitude regions in the ACT, NSW, Victoria and Tasmania. This was made possible through an Australian Research Council Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities grant (ARC LIEF). However, Adrienne and her colleagues knew it would be critical to continue the initiative well beyond the initial LIEF funding. Around the same time TERN was looking for a way to include mountain ecosystems into its national research infrastructure observatory. It was an ideal match.
“We’re now supported by TERN,” she says. “This funding supports a dedicated research coordinator at AMRF, as well as some administrative and communications support.”
By partnering with TERN, national universities, as well as state and federal governments, AMRF supports a range of research programs that assess the effects changing climate, water and fire management systems on mountain ecosystem processes and their feedbacks. As part of this, AMRF generates several data streams from weather stations, cameras, hydrology stations and other instruments deployed across multiple sites, explains AMRF Technical Officer, Nathan Battey.
“We’re currently in the process of integrating that data with the TERN data portal and making it available to a much wider group of people,” he says. “It feels like a pretty natural partnership.”
Remote and Rough Terrain
To really understand the dynamics of mountain ecosystems, it’s crucial to make observations on location, says Nathan.
Say you want to understand what’s happening to an alpine plant species during a heatwave. Instead of waiting for a heatwave, you can mimic one by artificially heating a small area of vegetation and examining how plant tissue responds. But time is of the essence, he explains.
“If you were to drive all the way back down the mountain with the sample in a cooler and then take measurements in the lab on campus, they wouldn’t reflect what’s going on in the field.”
Running experiments in a greenhouse on campus won’t do either. “It doesn’t reflect all the chaos and conditions in the field.”
Timely, in situ observations are crucial to really understand how ecosystems respond to environmental stressors in real time, but that means hauling all the necessary equipment with you. This equipment is often unwieldy, expensive or both. It’s not easy to carry up a mountain and sensitive instruments can be damaged by inhospitable conditions when you get there, says Nathan.
“The research questions you can ask are usually limited by what you can safely carry in a backpack.”
Upwardly Mobile
The AMRF Mobile Laboratory has been a game changer, says Nathan. Purchased with support from TERN, it’s a purpose-built caravan specially designed to function as a laboratory on wheels.
The mobile laboratory can be towed to remote areas where it provides a sheltered, indoor workspace. It offers bench space, power for scientific instruments, as well as a range of standard scientific equipment such as benchtop microscopes and temperature-controlled water baths, and other useful things like an oven, a sink, stoves and basic labware.
It can also be customised, says Nathan. “There’s space to bring whatever additional instruments the researchers might need, so it’s like a blank slate.”
“Being able to analyse samples on site allows researchers to say with more certainty that the numbers reflect the traits of organisms in their ecosystem and provides a lot more information about the ecological niche they’ve adapted to.”
As hoped, the mobile facility has significantly expanded the scope of mountain ecology fieldwork, says Adrienne.
“If you have the mobile lab, you can do experiments you couldn’t otherwise do in the field, especially when you’re working somewhere where you need to make measurements in extremely close proximity to the organisms you’re studying,” she says.
“There are now lots of different questions being asked, particularly around climate change, heat and drought,” she explains. “We’ve got people doing quite a lot of research around snow gum trees and dieback.”
“We also have hydrologists trying to understand hydrological cycles of how water moves through the mountains and how that might change as the climate changes. Others are using the Mobile Lab to study how climate change impacts flowering behaviour.”
Top of the Class
The AMRF Mobile Lab has had a wonderful impact on teaching, says Adrienne. “In terms of delivering classes it’s been incredibly useful. We can attempt things that we might not otherwise have attempted.”
It’s now a central part of ANU’s Advanced Field Studies in Functional Ecology course. The Mobile Lab has also been used to facilitate thesis research for 25 honours, master’s and PhD students.
Nathan agrees that it has expanded what the students can learn and achieve in mountain ecology. It enables them to explore a wide range of interests, especially when it comes to the impacts of climate change in the high country. In addition to heat wave research, some students are investigating lower-grade, long-term soil warming. Some are interested in the susceptibility of snow gums to beetle infestations. Others are looking at the increase in bushfire risk and fuel load at higher elevations.
The mobile facility is good for sparking the interest of future students, too, and is quite literally rolled out for community engagement events on a regular basis.
“It’s great for science outreach – it’s pretty and fun,” says Adrienne.
“Once, we set it up in the middle of Thredbo Village and people came and learned what it was about.”
Up on Mt Kosciuszko the advanced field studies cohort will soon pack up as an incomparable field experience draws to a close. They will come down the mountain with plenty of data, ideas, and dirty clothes, having crossed a quiet but important threshold from being students to becoming researchers.