ARCUE
biodiversity
Biodiversity and the City- public forum
ARCUE and the City of Melbourne hosted a Public Open Forum on “Biodiversity and the City” in early December 2012. The forum attracted over 200 members of the general public who came to the Melbourne Town Hall to hear a number of speakers talking about a range of issues and opportunities related to this topic. [...]
Managing our nocturnal neighbours – public forum
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 [...]
ARCUE Scientists Close Hume Highway
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 [...]
Seedbanks and Plant Invasions in Victoria’s Grasslands
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 [...]
The Role of Stormwater Retention Ponds in Maintaining Populations of Birds and Frogs
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 [...]
Frogs in Urban Ponds in Greater Melbourne
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 [...]
Urban Fungal Diversity
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 [...]