Browsing by Author "Pearson, S"

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    Increasing the understanding and use of natural archives of ecosystem services, resilience and threholds to improve policy, science and practice
    (SAGE, 2014-12-04) Pearson, S; Lynch, AJJ; Plant, R; Cork, S; Taffs, K; Dodson, JR; Maynard, S; Gergis, J; Gell, PA; Thackway, R; Sealie, L; Donaldson, J
    Despite the great potential of palaeo-environmental information to strengthen natural resource policy, science and practical outcomes naturally occurring archives of palaeo-environmental and ecosystem service information have not been fully recognised or utilised to inform the development of environmental policy. In this paper, we describe how Australian palaeo-environmental science is improving environmental understanding through local studies and regional syntheses that inform us about past conditions, extreme conditions and altered ecosystem states. Australian innovations in ecosystem services research and palaeo-environmental science contribute in five important contexts: discussions about environmental understanding and management objectives, improving access to information, improved knowledge about the dynamics of ecosystem services, increasing understanding of environmental processes and resource availability, and engaging interdisciplinary approaches to manage ecosystem services. Knowledge of the past is an important starting point for setting present and future resource management objectives, anticipating consequences of trade-offs, sharing risk and evaluating and monitoring the ongoing availability of ecosystem services. Palaeo-environmental information helps reframe discussions about desirable futures and collaborative efforts between scientists, planners, managers and communities. However, further steps are needed to translate the ecosystem services concept into ecosystem services policy and tangible management objectives and actions that are useful, feasible and encompass the range of benefits to people from ecosystems. We argue that increased incorporation of palaeo-environmental information into policy and decision-making is needed for evidence-based adaptive management to enhance sustainability of ecosystem functions and reduce long-term risks. © 2020 by SAGE Publications
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    Paleoclimate studies and natural-resource management in the Murray-Darling Basin II: unravelling human impacts and climate variability
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2013-08-09) Mills, K; Gell, PA; Gergis, J; Baker, PJ; Finlayson, CM; Hesse, PP; Jones, R; Kershaw, P; Pearson, S; Treble, PC; Barr, C; Brookhouse, MT; Drysdale, RN; McDonald, J; Haberle, SG; Reid, M; Thoms, M; Tibby, J
    The management of the water resources of the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) has long been contested, and the effects of the recent Millennium drought and subsequent flooding events have generated acute contests over the appropriate allocation of water supplies to agricultural, domestic and environmental uses. This water-availability crisis has driven demand for improved knowledge of climate change trends, cycles of variability, the range of historical climates experienced by natural systems and the ecological health of the system relative to a past benchmark. A considerable volume of research on the past climates of southeastern Australia has been produced over recent decades, but much of this work has focused on longer geological time-scales, and is of low temporal resolution. Less evidence has been generated of recent climate change at the level of resolution that accesses the cycles of change relevant to management. Intra-decadal and near-annual resolution (high-resolution) records do exist and provide evidence of climate change and variability, and of human impact on systems, relevant to natural-resource management. There exist now many research groups using a range of proxy indicators of climate that will rapidly escalate our knowledge of management-relevant, climate change and variability. This review assembles available climate and catchment change research within, and in the vicinity of, the MDB and portrays the research activities that are responding to the knowledge need. It also discusses how paleoclimate scientists may better integrate their pursuits into the resource-management realm to enhance the utility of the science, the effectiveness of the management measures and the outcomes for the end users. © 2020 Informa UK Limited
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    Validating putatively cross-dated Callitris tree-ring chronologies using bomb-pulse radiocarbon analysis
    (CSIRO Publishing, 2011-02-10) Pearson, S; Hua, Q; Allen, KJ; Bowman, DMJS
    Nuclear weapons testing during the 1950s generated an atmospheric pulse of the carbon isotope, (14)C. Worldwide, trees growing during that period and in subsequent decades assimilated (14)C-enriched CO(2), leaving a distinct isotopic signature that can be used to precisely date tree rings. Thirty single-ring samples were extracted for AMS (14)C analysis from cores taken from living trees of five different Callitris species [C. endlicheri (Parl.) F. M. Bailey, C. glaucophylla Joy Thomps. & L.A.S. Johnson, C. intratropica Benth., C. preissii Miq., and C. rhomboidea R.Br. ex Rich. & A. Rich] at 13 sites. The ages of individual tree rings were determined by both (14)C bomb-pulse dating and cross-dating (based on 20-30 cores from the same site) in order to (1) provide independent verification of tree-ring dates, (2) detect false or missing rings from sites with otherwise good chronologies, and (3) test whether growth rings were annual for cores from sites where cross-dating was not possible. Our approach confirmed dates on chronologies from monsoon tropical sites, provided checked chronologies in subtropical and temperate sites, and improved dating control on arid-zone ring counts. It was found that Callitris are more likely to form regular annual rings when growing in seasonally dry environments than in more arid sites with highly variable precipitation patterns. © 2011, CSIRO Publishing