top of page
image.png

Professor David Eldridge

Research Interests

​My research aims to understand how arid and semi-arid ecosystems function; specifically the relationships between plants, animals and soil processes. This work is necessarily multi-disciplinary, and covers the broad areas of rangelands ecology, ecosystem engineering (the effects of organisms on soil processes), soil biology, soil chemistry, restoration ecology and microbiology. The focus of my research is on the semi-arid woodlands of eastern Australia, and I have long-term research interests in the Chihuahuan Desert in the western United States and Caragana spp. shrublands in Inner Mongolia.

​

I am a Professor at the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of NSW (retired Senior Principal Research Scientist with the Department Planning, Industry and Environment). My research is more applied, and many of my students undertake projects that address priority areas associated with land degradation and its management. A number of these students has gone on to find employment within the Department.

Jingyi_JYD_023.JPG

Associate Prof Jingyi Ding

  • Currently: Associate Professor, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

  • PhD candidate, Biological Science, University of New South Wales (2017-2021)

  • MSc, Land use management, University of Beijing Normal University, China (2017)

  • BSc, Geography Science, University of Yanbian University, China (2014)

​

Woody plant form is highly variable across climatic gradients. This is often due to differences in environmental variables and how particular woody species adapt to their environment. In my research I am examining various measures of woody plant architecture at 150 sites from the east coast of Australia to the Strezlecki Desert. I am measuring how the architecture of tree, shrubs and grasses (canopy size, branching ratio, plant height, basal area, and various allometric relationships) changes within and among plant species and how woody plants are distributed at a site and along the gradient. Exploring the variation in woody plant structure can demonstrate how woody plant adapt to different environment conditions. This study will help to improve our understanding of the mechanisms driving Australian woody plant formation and provide support for woody plant management under a changing climate.

Dr Samantha Travers

Field of Research: dryland function, grazing, invertebrates, reintroducitons, rewilding, statistical analyses
 
Senior Research Scientist: Conservation & Restoration Science Branch Science & Insights Division, Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment & Water
 
My main interests are in restoring landscapes through the reintroduction of fauna and microbes. I co-design experiments to test animal effects on soils, and co-supervise international students working on the restoration of degraded woodlands in western NSW and eastern Australia. I have assessed the effects of historic logging and river regulation on the loss of large habitat trees and dense stands of slow growing small trees.
​
I provide science advice that underpins the NSW Government’s net-positive Biodiversity Offsets Scheme. To do this I am involved in studies to develop an ecological evidence base of active restoration, based on changes in Vegetation Integrity Scores and ecosystem credits, currently under the NSW Biodiversity Assessment Methodology, develop economic evidence to identify when active restoration is cost effective, and when people are willing to restore and how this influences uptake and success. I have also developed and tested a transparent and easily implemented risk framework to assess potential impacts on the Biodiversity Offset Scheme.

IMG_3576.JPG
image.png

Dr Max Mallen-Cooper

Field of Research: Range limits, biocrusts, functional traits, biopedturbation, drylands

 

Office: MQLF Fellow

School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University

 

Biocrusts (biological soil crusts) are communities of non-vascular plants and microbes that form a living carpet in many of the world’s driest places. Confronted by a changing climate, biocrust species have four options: adapt, acclimate, move or die. My research focuses on option three. By identifying the climate variables that limit their current ranges, we can predict the movements of species as they attempt to track their optimum climate.

Past PhD and MSc students

​

  • Jingyi Ding - Environmental drivers of woody plant structure in drylands
     

  • Max Mallen-Cooper - The responses of terricolous lichens and bryophytes to past and future climate change
     

  • Vandandorj Sumiya – The effects of grazing and aridity on multiple ecosystem functions and services in the semi-arid woodlands of eastern Australia
    ​

  • James Glasier – Ant traits, myrmecophiles, and disturbance
    ​

  • Samantha Travers – Aspects of litter dynamics in semi-arid environments in eastern Australia.
    ​

  • Stefani Daryanto – The effects of shrub removal and grazing on vegetation and soils in a shrub-encroached Australian woodland
     

  • Alan Kwok – Distrubution and structure of arthropod communities in relation to resource patches and spatial scale in dryland woodland systems
    ​

  • Alex James – Development of resource-rich patches by soil-disturbing animals
    ​

  • Wendy Thompson – Composition, structure and function of Callitris glaucophylla woodlands along a rainfall gradient across eastern Australia.

​

 

Past Honours students

​

  • Callum Fitzpatrick - The fertile island effect in relation to ecosystem productivity

  • Jasmine Yaccoub – Moss traits vary in relation to aridity and species 

  • Melissa Abdallah – The response of spiders to aridity and grazing

  • Adriana Zaja – Impacts of feral horses on ecosystem processes

  • Naomi Ng – Seed dispersal by rabbits and kangaroos

  • Max Mallen-Cooper – Effects of grazing by livestock and native herbivores on functional diversity of biocrust communities

  • Anna Gor – Livestock grazing consequences on small mammal and reptile assemblages in arid Australia

  • Thomas Pogson – Facilitation in arid zone shrubs

  • Debadrita Guha – Facilitative effects of canopy soil and shade on groundstorey plants

  • Genevieve Beecham – A system-based analysis of shrub and grazing effects on ecosystem function

  • Gabriella Radnan – Does the morphology of animal foraging pits affect secondary seed dispersal by ants?

  • Kimberley Howard – Plant-plant interactions in an arid shrubland: the role of shrubs as facilitators

  • Adam Birnbaum – Does the mechanical destruction of rabbit warrens restore ecosystem function in a semi-degraded woodland?

  • Vanessa Wong – The effect of tree health on soil physical and chemical properties in Kyeamba Valley NSW.

  • Andrew McLeod – Spatial distribution of organic carbon in relation to rangeland condition

  • Hamish Tucker – The role of isolated woodland trees in soil water relations.

  • Kylie Goodwin – Diversity of cyanobacteria in semi-arid biological soil crusts in NSW Australia

  • Helen Woods – An assessment of biodiversity of tree plantings in the Kyeamba Valley, NSW.

  • Jenny Schabel – A comparison of vegetation between road reserves and adjoining agricultural paddocks 

  • Melissa Stafford – A quantitative assessment of the soil and vegetation patterns at ‘Zara’: a sandhill remnant on the Riverine Plain.

  • Carly Constantinides – Mechanically ripped warrens of the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus L.): an assessment of the soil, vegetation and active soil sandbank in the semi-arid woodlands of western NSW.

  • Robyn Simpson – Warrens of the of the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus L.): their effects on soils and vegetation in the semi-arid woodlands of eastern NSW.

  • Will Cuddy – The distribution and floristics of non-vascular soil crusts in the box woodlands of the inland slope of NSW.

  • Niki Huang – Interrelationships between burrowing animals and arid landscapes.

  • Anna Mensinga – The impact of echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus) foraging pits on ecosystem processes.

  • Jamie Turner – The effects of European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus L.) disturbance on invertebrate assemblages, with a focus on ants, at Fowlers Gap in the semi-arid zone of northwestern NSW.

  • Adam Vine – Busting the bunnies: an assessment of integrated rabbit control techniques in semiarid central NSW

  • Julien Reyes – Seasonal and spatial distribution of the funnel ant (Aphaenogaster barbigula) in a semi-arid woodland

bottom of page