DrAaron Greenville

A select list of projects are below, but for more see here.

Understanding ‘Greenspots’ to Increase Climate Change Resilience and Persistence of Threatened Biodiversity in Arid New South Wales

The Greenspots Project examines the importance of mesic refuge areas (Greenspots) for biodiversity in arid NSW and increases knowledge about threatened species distributions and habitat associations, many of which are data deficient. The Greenspots Project is funded by the NSW Government’s Saving Our Species Program. It is a collaboration between the NSW Department of Planning and Environment and Sydney University with close affiliations with industry partners (e.g. the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust and Western Local Land Services).

Maximising the resilience of pastures to grazing and extreme drought events (with DroughtNet and Sydney Institute of Agriculture)

This project aims to address the significant knowledge gap of how species composition may change due to extreme drought, and in-turn, quantify the loss of ecosystem function resulting from species turnover. Further, this project will identify species that contribute the most to function.

Can ecosystems recover under a changing wildfire regime in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area? (with WWF Eyes on Recovery, Blue Mountains City Council, Greater Sydney Local Land Services and National Parks and Wildlife)

Ecosystems are collapsing. The unprecedented pace of global environmental change in our new geological epoch-the Anthropocene-is coupled with increases in disturbance events, such as extreme wildfires. Australia's 2019/20 wildfire season was unprecedented, but just how ecosystems respond to dramatic disturbances is highly uncertain. Nor do we understand the complex responses of ecosystems to increases in fire frequency and severity because of climate change. Current ecosystem assessment processes focus on species or habitat loss, but often occur too late to save species of high ecological or conservation value and therefore result in a loss of critical function from the system. To aid post-fire recovery of native species, we must understand the complexity of the interactions among threats from increased fire frequency, severity and introduced predators and how these interactions affect function. This project aims to investigate how the fire severity and frequency affect the trajectory of change in species composition from the 2019/20 mega-fires in the greater Blue Mountains and thus provide new insights into how communities may respond under changing wildfire regimes.

International long term ecological research network (iLTER): Simpson Desert, Australia (with the Desert Ecology Research Group at The University of Sydney, Australia)

This project aims to quantify inter-relationships between the frequency and intensity of increased climate extremes, wildfire and introduced species and their effects on species dynamics.