Ecology and conservation research

Governments, landholders and environmental groups need to understand ecological processes and the role of plants and animals to manage the natural environment properly.

The Herbarium’s studies of vegetation communities, flora and fauna around the state help to build that understanding.

Herbarium scientists research the variety and condition of Queensland’s vegetation. The information is used as a reference for assessing environmental health in different parts of the state and for many other purposes—for example, for deciding land developments and other land-use changes, and whether to extend grazing land leases.

Wetland Condition Monitoring

Assessing natural freshwater wetlands throughout the Great Barrier Reef Catchment Area, this program monitors and evaluates progress towards the overarching objective of improved wetland condition in alignment with the Reef 2050 long term sustainability plan.

The program’s methods, detailed in Wetland Tracker, involve comprehensive monitoring through both desktop analyses and field surveys. These assessments evaluate overall wetland condition in terms of both the pressures (from human activities) on, and the current state of wetlands. Visit the Wetland Condition Monitoring Program webpage to find out more.

Biodiversity condition

BioCondition is an assessment tool for measuring vegetation condition.

It provides a set of attributes against which a landholder or resource manager can measure a patch of vegetation. It is site-based, repeatable and useful tool for determining biodiversity values.

Spatial BioCondition

Spatial BioCondition is a modelling and mapping framework that is used to predict and map the condition of vegetation in most of Queensland’s regional ecosystems.

Using machine learning to integrate site-based vegetation condition assessment methods and remote sensing land cover data, the framework predicts how well the vegetation maintains the biodiversity values in each ecosystem.

The Spatial BioCondition framework aligns with the BioCondition and Regional Ecosystem frameworks.

Ecological research

Fire, flood and drought have helped shape Australia’s landscape and its biodiversity. Human and introduced animals and plants have also had an impact.

Knowledge about the effect of these over time is needed for planning purposes and the development of sustainability guidelines, such as fire management guidelines to help manage natural environments.

Other areas of research include:

• impacts of horse riding in protected areas
• research on specialised habitats like spring wetlands to help protect these fragile areas.

2011 floods

Contact us for information about the impact of January 2011 floods on riparian vegetation and mangroves in South East Queensland.