RIEL seminar series
Models for interpreting ecosystem change
| Presenter | Dr Anna Richards (CSIRO) | |
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| Date/Time |
to
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| Contact person | E: RIEL.outreach@cdu.edu.au | |
| Location |
Savanna Room, Yellow 1.2.48 at CDU Casuarina Campus And online via Zoom (see below for Zoom link) All times are ACST |
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| Open to | Public | |
Dr Anna Richards is a plant and soil ecologist and senior research scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), based in Darwin. She has a broad interest in ecosystem management – particularly how the science of vegetation and soil dynamics, along with land management practices, can be used to better monitor, evaluate and forecast ecosystem condition.
Healthy ecosystems contribute to human wellbeing and the economy, but to achieve this they must be effectively managed, which requires credible and trusted information. Ecosystem accounts are one potential source of this information; they quantify stocks of natural capital and flows of ecosystem services, using the System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting.
Here we describe a set of regional ecosystem accounts, developed in collaboration with the Australian government, for the gulf region in Queensland. To interpret change in the accounts, including ecosystem extent, condition, biodiversity and services over time, we collaborated with regional experts to develop a set of conceptual models – state and transition models – to show graphically how ecosystems work.
In the seminar ‘Models for interpreting ecosystem change’, Anna will describe the models and their application to understanding how different land management actions alter ecosystem characteristics and the values and benefits that flow from them.