Native Vegetation

Breathing roots, shifting waters: Tracking tree evapotranspiration in response to hydrological dynamics

Join us for a journey over the last 15 years to understand why measuring water use of riverine trees, using sap flow and water balance methods, provides a robust way to investigate the capacity of trees to respond to altered hydrology. Hear how this method is moving away from the traditional condition index metrics that have been used, to an improved understanding of a tree community’s adaptive capacity to respond to change and when they might be heading to an altered state and require intervention.

Basin-Scale Reflection: Vegetation

Environmental Water: Supporting the right plants in the right places

The vegetation that occurs along floodplains and wetlands is highly valued for the ecological and cultural benefits it provides. A combination of land use changes and flow modification has had a detrimental effect on the condition of vegetation across many of the world’s large river systems. Environmental flows are used across the Basin to improve the condition and diversity of floodplain and wetland vegetation. Our evaluation investigates the vegetation outcomes from the use of Commonwealth environmental water over the past 9 years in the Murray Darling Basin. We demonstrate a relationship between inundation regimes and the plants that we see in wetlands and floodplains and in doing so, show how environmental water is being used to maintain a diversity of important plant species across the Murray-Darling Basin.

Integrating technology into wetland vegetation monitoring

A multi-disciplinary team from the Centre for Applied Water Science at the University of Canberra have been developing methods to estimate wetland plants and their response to environmental water using drone imagery and machine learning. Dr Will Higgisson will present on a method developed to estimate the percent cover of common reed (Phragmites australis) and a measure of condition and cover of tangled lignum (Duma florulenta). This webinar will provide the background to this work, the processes we took, and the potential application of these methods.

Spatial and temporal assessment of floodplain vegetation response to floods

The aim of this study was therefore to assess post-flood vegetation responses as a result of two key flood periods – 2016 and 2022. Multiple sources of remote sensing data was coupled with field measured evapotranspiration to identify inundation areas and assess tree condition.

Managing for non-stationarity in floodplain-wetland systems:

Resilient variability in non-woody vegetation responses.