2016-12, Ryder, Darren, Mika, Sarah, Vincent, Ben, Burns, Adrienne, Schmidt, John

The development of a standardised means of collecting, analysing and presenting riverine, coastal and estuarine assessments of ecological condition has been identified as a key need for coastal Local Councils who are required to monitor natural resource condition, and water quality and quantity in these systems. Forty-four study sites were selected across the Macleay catchment; 32 freshwater sites and 12 estuarine sites and these were sampled 6 times from April 2015 to February 2016 to contribute to the assessment of the ecological condition of the catchment.

The Macleay River Catchment was divided into four major hydrological units across 22 subcatchments: Tablelands, Macleay River main stem, freshwater tributaries and the estuarine tributaries. The project aimed to:

• Assess the health of coastal catchments using standardised indicators and reporting for estuaries, and freshwater river reaches using hydrology, water quality, riparian vegetation and habitat quality, geomorphic condition and macroinvertebrate assemblages as indicators of aquatic ecosystem health, and
• Contribute scientific information to the development of a report card system for communicating the health of the estuarine and freshwater systems in the Macleay catchment.

2024-10-16, Mackay, K D, Vincent, B, Southwell, M, Growns, I, Mika, S

Context. Understanding fire and inundation impacts on wetland vegetation communities is crucial for effective post-fire wetland management. Aims. We aimed to determine the impact of post-fire inundation on plant community structure and seedling germination and establishment after a large wildfire. We asked two questions, namely (1) did fire, drought or inundation affect plant communities the most; and (2) did fire or inundation affect seedling germination and establishment? Methods. Using a before–after–control–impact (BACI) design, we monitored vegetation changes in water-couch wetland communities before and after a wildfire. Also, soil samples were collected from burnt and unburnt sites and assessed for impacts of fire and post-fire inundation regimes on seed germination and seedling establishment. Key results. Inundation variables had more pronounced and more consistent impacts on vegetation measures than did fire or drought variables. Fire impacts were mainly short-term, with impact thresholds at 72 and 143 days after fire. Low germination levels and zero seedling survival were observed without inundation. Conclusions. Fire was a major but short-term contributor to wetland vegetation change, whereas drought had longer-term impacts, and inundation regimes had the greatest impacts. Implications. Providing a range of inundation conditions post-fire may enhance wetland vegetation recovery and have modifying effects on invasive species.

2016, Ryder, D, Mika, S, Vincent, B

The Ecosystem Health Monitoring Program (Ecohealth) is a comprehensive estuarine and freshwater monitoring program that reports on the health of our waterways. The Ecohealth program includes a number of physical, chemical and biological indicators to determine the health of waterways. The combination of waterway health indicators that identify short-term (water chemistry), intermediate-term (zooplankton, macroinvertebrates), and long-term responses (fish, geomorphology and riparian vegetation) provides a robust program for quantifying, reporting and communicating waterway health, and prioritising management actions.

The Ecohealth Monitoring Program outlines a framework for the development of a catchment-based aquatic health monitoring program for rivers and estuaries with the aim of providing consistency in monitoring and reporting, and establishing the partnerships required for local and regional dissemination of outcomes. The development and application of specific monitoring frameworks, and standardised data collection, analysis and reporting underpins the Ecohealth program. This standardised approach facilitates an effective reporting mechanism to communicate water quality and resource condition information to the wider public, stakeholders and managers.

Ecohealth enhances the ability of natural resource managers to monitor, measure and report on ecosystem health by establishing a statistically-valid and quality assured sampling regime. The benefits of a standardised, region-wide system include:

The products generated by the Ecohealth program cover high-level scientific technical reports that provide an in-depth presentation and analysis of data collected, as well as Ecohealth Report Cards that aim to clearly disseminate waterway health outcomes and management initiatives to engage with local communities. In addition to communication products, Ecohealth also provides a scientifically robust dataset as the basis for State of Catchment (SoC) and State of Environment (SoE).

2015, Clarke, Peter J, Keith, David A, Vincent, Ben, Letten, Andrew D

Questions: Are Australian 'Sphagnum' bogs compositionally stable or undergoing long-termchange in response to grazing legacies or environmental change along a climatic gradient? Are these 'Sphagnum' bogs resilient to discrete fire events, and over what time scales does recovery from disturbance take place? How does fire disturbance influence species composition in the assembly of fire-prone Australian bog communities? Location: Alpine and subalpine bogs in mainland eastern Australia (Kosciuszko National Park). Method: Full floristic sampling over ca. 50 yr (1960s, 1990, 2005, 2007, 2013) at 11 sites; each site sampled with 25 quadrats (0.1 m2) haphazardly placed during each successive survey. Sites were stratified over alpine and subalpine elevations, in burned and unburned areas. Changes in species composition over space and time were examined withmultivariate and univariate analyses. Results: The 'Sphagnum' bogs of the subalpine and alpine regions show progressive increases in cover of 'Sphagnum' over the last 40-50 yr. Overall species richness and frequency of dominant woody species declined. These trends were not strongly related to the climate gradient. Fire temporarily reduced the frequency of most species but initial floristic composition was regained a decade after fire. There was fire-dependent variation related to regeneration of hygrophyllous woody species through seed germination and seedling growth in open ground. Conclusion: Our results show a degree of community resilience to both grazing and fire, although some observed changes appear directional and the recovery time for grazing was much longer than that for fire. The increase in 'Sphagnum' frequency across subalpine and alpine bogs is likely to reflect progressive recovery of 'Sphagnum' from the grazing era, possibly enhanced by the changing atmosphere. Concurrently, there have been declines in species richness and woody species frequency. The bogs exhibited resilience to infrequent pulse disturbance related to fires, which appear to drive community assembly through cycles of compositional change.

2016, Denham, Andrew J, Vincent, Ben, Clarke, Peter J, Auld, Tony D

In many fire-prone habitats fires may be relatively frequent but of low severity or small areal extent. However, these same habitats may occasionally be subject to large, severe fires when extreme conditions and ignitions coincide. After [50 years without significant fire, a mega-fire burnt[50,000 ha of 'Eucalyptus-Callitris' forest in southeastern Australia. We assessed the impact of this fire on vegetation structure at a landscape scale by quantifying post-fire responses of 11 tree species over 97 sites with varying fire severity. At low severity over 60 % of 'Callitris' trees survived by escaping crown scorch, but they were almost all killed at higher severity. Fewer eucalypts escaped crown scorch (33 % at low fire severity) but there was no evidence of mortality due to the fire. Most eucalypts were topkilled (55 %) but less frequently at low (39 %) compared to moderate (55 %) or high (74 %) fire severity. Larger trees were less likely to suffer topkill. Taken together these results indicate that this wildfire has caused major changes to vegetation structure within the area burnt. Death of 'Callitris' trees reduced canopy tree density by 25 % and a high proportion of eucalypt topkill has resulted in a shorter, more open forest. Recovery of the tallest structural components through eucalypt regrowth and maturation of 'Callitris' may require fire-free intervals of several decades. Any fires within this period may extend the recovery time and lead to declines in populations of the obligate-seeding 'Callitris' species.

2020-01, Growns, I, Lewis, S, Ryder, D, Tsoi, W, Vincent, B

Floodplain wetlands are some of the most productive ecosystems available to aquatic and terrestrial organisms. However, regulation of lowland rivers can disrupt ecological processes occurring in the river–floodplain ecosystems, and environmental water can be delivered to affected wetlands to maintain productivity. It is not well understood at what stage following inundation there would be sufficient invertebrate biomass and large-sized individuals to support production and reproduction of secondary consumers. In this study we follow changes in the abundances of invertebrates after wetting in three mesocosm trials using soil from two wetlands from the north of the Murray–Darling Basin over 6-week periods. Peak abundances generally occurred in either the fifth or sixth weeks, but abundances were high after 2–3 weeks. Our results suggest that inundation of wetlands using environmental watering can achieve high productivity within a short time frame, within weeks. However, how quickly the high productivity is passed on to second-order consumers remains unclear and should be an area of future research.

2014, Clarke, Peter J, Prior, Lynda D, French, Ben J, Vincent, Ben, Knox, Kirsten J E, Bowman, David M J S

We used a mosaic of infrequently burnt temperate rainforest and adjacent, frequently burnt eucalypt forests in temperate eastern Australia to test whether: (1) there were differences in flammability of fresh and dried foliage amongst congeners from contrasting habitats, (2) habitat flammability was related to regeneration strategy, (3) litter fuels were more flammable in frequently burnt forests, (4) the severity of a recent fire influenced the flammability of litter (as this would suggest fire feedbacks), and (5) microclimate contributed to differences in fire hazard amongst habitats. Leaf-level comparisons were made among 11 congeneric pairs from rainforest and eucalypt forests. Leaflevel ignitability, combustibility and sustainability were not consistently higher for taxa from frequently burnt eucalypt forests, nor were they higher for species with fire-driven recruitment. The bulk density of litter-bed fuels strongly influenced flammability, but eucalypt forest litter was not less dense than rainforest litter. Ignitability, combustibility and flame sustainability of community surface fuels (litter) were compared using fuel arrays with standardized fuel mass and moisture content. Forests previously burned at high fire severity did not have consistently higher litter flammability than those burned at lower severity or long unburned. Thus, contrary to the Mutch hypothesis, there was no evidence of higher flammability of litter fuels or leaves from frequently burnt eucalypt forests compared with infrequently burnt rainforests. We suggest the manifest pyrogenicity of eucalypt forests is not due to natural selection for more flammable foliage, but better explained by differences in crown openness and associated microclimatic differences.

2018-07, Mika, Sarah, Vincent, Ben, Ryder, Darren, Lewis, Sam, Baker, Ana, Schmidt, John

The development of a standardised means of collecting, analysing and presenting riverine, coastal and estuarine assessments of ecological condition has been identified as a key need for coastal Local Councils who are required to monitor natural resource condition, and water quality and quantity in these systems. Thirty-one study sites were selected across the Nambucca River and Deep Creek catchments; 18 freshwater sites and 13 estuarine sites and these were sampled 6 times from July 2016 to June 2017 to contribute to the assessment of the ecological condition of the catchment.

The Nambucca Ecohealth program was divided into six major hydrological units across nine subcatchments: Nambucca River (North Arm), tributaries of the Nambucca North Arm, Taylors Arm, tributaries of Taylors Arm, and Warrell Creek in the Nambucca catchment; and Deep Creek, an ICOLL (Intermittently Closed and Open Lake or Lagoon) to the north of the Nambucca catchment. The project aimed to:

• Assess the health of coastal catchments using standardised indicators and reporting for estuaries, and freshwater river reaches using hydrology, water quality, riparian vegetation and habitat quality, geomorphic condition and macroinvertebrate assemblages as indicators of aquatic ecosystem health, and
• Contribute scientific information to the development of a report card system for communicating the health of the estuarine and freshwater systems in the Nambucca River and Deep Creek catchments.

2017-06, Ryder, Darren, Mika, Sarah, Vincent, Ben, Schmidt, John

The development of a standardised means of collecting, analysing and presenting riverine, coastal and estuarine assessments of ecological condition has been identified as a key need for coastal Local Councils who are required to monitor natural resource condition, and water quality and quantity in these systems. Thirty-four study sites were selected across the Port Macquarie region; 15 freshwater sites and 19 estuarine sites and these were sampled 12 times from May 2014 to June 2015 to contribute to the assessment of the ecological condition of the catchment.

The Port Macquarie region comprises three catchments - the Hastings River, Lake Cathie - Lake Innes, and the Camden Haven River. These were divided into 14 subcatchments for reporting: Hastings River, Forbes River, Ellenborough River, Thone River, Pappinbarra River, Mortons Creek, Wilson River, Maria River and Limeburners Creek in the Hastings catchment; Lake Cathie - Lake Innes; and the Camden Haven River, Upsalls Creek, Black Creek and estuarine lagoons Watson Taylors Lake, Queens Lake and Gogleys Lagoon in the Camden Haven catchment. The project aimed to:

• Assess the health of coastal catchments using standardised indicators and reporting for estuaries, and freshwater river reaches using hydrology, water quality, riparian vegetation and habitat quality, geomorphic condition and macroinvertebrate assemblages as indicators of aquatic ecosystem health, and
• Contribute scientific information to the development of a report card system for communicating the health of the estuarine and freshwater systems in the Port Macquarie region.

2021-10-01, Growns, Ivor, Tsoi, Iris Wing, Southwell, Mark, Mika, Sarah, Lewis, Sam, Vincent, Ben

Increased need for freshwater for human uses from the mid-1900s has severely impacted rivers and floodplain wetlands so that they are some of the most seriously degraded environments in the world. Research and monitoring in this area to date has focused on understanding 'flow-ecology' relationships, without investigating the mechanisms underlying them. The use of species traits offers a tool for defining mechanistic connections between biotic responses and environmental conditions. We examined nine macroinvertebrate trait categories in both wetlands and channels to determine whether their profiles responded to hydrology in the Gwydir River system in the northern Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. Trait responses were shown for the wetlands but not the river channels. Twelve traits showed positive relationships with the time the wetlands were connected to their river channels. It is unclear the reason(s) why the river channel invertebrate traits did not respond to hydrology. However, the use of environmental flows in the river systems may be important to other aspects of macroinvertebrate assemblages such as their role in food webs to support higher-order consumers.