Experts were gathered at the School of Botany, University of Melbourne, to participate in a 2-day SDM workshop in April 2013 in relation to Diuris fragrantissima, an endangered orchid restricted only to Sunshine in the western suburbs of Melbourne, and to Altona with reintroductions. The workshop was facilitated by Joslin Moore and Rodney van der [...]
Our congratulations to Briony Norton, who finished her PhD at ARCUE and the University of Melbourne just last year – she has now moved to the UK to start work as a Research Associate at the University of Sheffield, in the area of urban ecology and ecosystem services. Briony’s position is one of six postdoctoral [...]
An interview on ABC’s Radio National with Dr Joslin Moore from the National Environmental Research Program’s Environmental Decisions Hub and ARCUE (Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne) explains the most appropriate way, at present, to deal with invading non-native willows in important bog areas such as the Bogong High Plains (in Victoria’s Alpine National Park). The new [...]
An article by Kylie Soanes on The Conversation website explains what’s been happening with road ecology research at the Hume Highway in northeastern Victoria. Following on from positive results of research on animals using experimental rope bridges and ‘glider poles’ to cross roads, Kylie has been monitoring use of the glider poles in the centre [...]
A special public forum exploring the interactions between people and bats in a rapidly urbanising world will be held on April 11th at the University of Melbourne as part of the 15th Australasian Bat Society Conference. This forum is for: • Government environmental & biodiversity officers • Ecological consultants, arborists, landscape planners • Educators and students [...]
On a Saturday in June of last year, traffic on the busy Hume Highway near Benalla was diverted for an unusual reason. The first of three rope bridges and three ‘glider poles’ were being installed to provide a means for squirrel gliders, possums and other native animals to pass safely across the road. The bridge [...]
At the end of 2006, Honours student Aaron Dodd finished his investigation into seed banks and plant invasions of Victoria’s, Western basalt plains grasslands, looking at the effects of landscape on the spatial pattern of the seed banks. He took numerous soil cores from grasslands along a 200 km urban – rural gradient running west [...]
Stormwater retention ponds are commonly created in new residential and industrial estates, as well as along roads, to mitigate the impact of stormwater runoff on urban waterways. Retention ponds also provide habitat for wildlife and green open spaces for human recreation, and have the potential to mitigate wetland loss in urban areas. However, the factors [...]
Dr. Andrew Hamer has recently completed the field research part of a project that investigated the effects of urbanisation on frog communities. His main aim was to find out what local habitat variables were responsible for the number of frog species observed breeding at ponds in urban areas. Andrew surveyed frogs and tadpoles between November [...]
Mark Newbound has been researching the effect of urbanisation on fungi. Over the last three and a half years he has assessed fungal diversity in red gum woodland remnants along an urban-rural gradient to the north of Melbourne. He surveyed fungi using the classical method of collecting fruiting bodies, as well as using the most [...]