TERN's Nikki Thurgate's presentation on AusPlots at EcoTas13 in November 2013.

1. Missing Pages: Filling the Gaps in
Australia’s Ecological Story
Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network – The University of Adelaide:
Nikki Thurgate
Co-Authors: Ben Sparrow, Eleanor Dormontt, Stuart Phinn and
Andrew Lowe

2. Context
•TERN – provides research infrastructure to Australia’s
ecosystem science and management community
•A range of facilities combining expertise
– Remote Sensing, Soils, Biogeochemical flux, Ecological plots
•TERN is developing a framework to combine information
to inform on the ecology of Australian environments
•The “Field Ecology” components of TERN undertook to
synthesise key findings from long term ecological
research for Australia ( > 10 years of sampling)
•Resulted in a book:

3. Chapters investigate what is know about particular
ecosystems based on long term ecological research
Chapter 3 looks at which ecosystems we have
reasonable sampling density, and which communities
are under-represented (i.e. gaps)

4. Started by gathering information on long term
studies covered in book
Includes location and type of ecological data
NB. The book incorporates data from a great
many, but not all, ecological studies, and is not
intended to be representative – rather what was
easily available and synthesisable

5. Coverage of ecological data assessed against
• Climate – Hutchinson’s Agroclimatic Zones
• Vegetation – National Vegetation Information System (NVIS)
Major Vegetation Groups
• Biomes
• The Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation of Australia (IBRA)
• Natural Resource Management Regions

6. Tropical
Semi- Arid – Summer rain
Arid
Semi-Arid
Winter Rain
Temperate
Mediteranean
Alpine
Hutchinson’s Agro-climatic Zones

7. MVG
Hummock grasslands
Acacia Systems
Chenopods

8. Animate Ecoregions/NRM/Ibra
NRM Regions
The Interim Biogeographic
Regionalisation of Australia

9. GIS analysis
Assessed all ecological sites against these
ecosystem classification layers and summarised
results in terms of depth of coverage

10. Results - Climate
Hut
Red – Poorly Sampled
Yellow – Sampled
Green – Well Sampled

11. Red – Poorly Sampled
Yellow – Sampled
Green – Well Sampled

13. Summary
Environments closer to populated areas are better
monitored
Arid and Semi Arid areas poorly monitored
Spinifex Hummock Grasslands, Acacia
woodlands/Shrublands and Chenopod Shrublands are
all particularly poorly monitored.

14. Hummock Grasslands – 26% Aust

15. Acacia Systems ~18% Aust

16. Chenopods - ~9% Aust

17. -More info in the book

18. - More info in the book
-New TERN infrastructure
helping to fill these gaps
over time.
-Ausplots sampling in
Rangelands – 500 plots

19. - More info in the book
-New TERN infrastructure
helping to fill these gaps
over time.
-Ausplots sampling in
Rangelands – 500 plots
-Standardised nationally
consistent method

20. - More info in the book
-New TERN infrastructure
helping to fill these gaps
over time.
-Ausplots sampling in
Rangelands – 500 plots
-Standardised nationally
consistent method
-Electronic data collection

21. - More info in the book
-New TERN infrastructure
helping to fill these gaps
over time.
-Ausplots sampling in
Rangelands – 500 plots
-Standardised nationally
consistent method
-Electronic data collection
so data automatically
uploaded to AEKOS and S2S

22. - More info in the book
-New TERN infrastructure
helping to fill these gaps
over time.
-Ausplots sampling in
Rangelands – 500 plots
-Standardised nationally
consistent method
-Electronic data collection
so data automatically
uploaded to AEKOS
-Development of new
methods
- www.tern.org.au