Currently there are a number of research opportunities for prospective students which can be nested within larger competitively funded research programs.  These are outlined below but we are open to supporting projects that originate from students.

The relationship between daily weather patterns and pollen variability in Hobart

Potential supervisors: David Bowman, Fay Johnston and Grant Williamson

Funded by the Weather Channel, we have been monitoring the aerobiology of Hobart for the last 2 years.  Via collaboration with ANU we are also building an on-line pollen atlas based on monitoring the phenology of habitats surround Hobart.  There is an opportunity to build on this research looking at the effect of climate on pollen rain and the health effects of pollen.

Continental-wide comparison of tracheid structure in Callitris species across Australia

Potential supervisors: David Bowman, Tim Brodribb and Lynda Prior

Over the last two years we have collected thousands of cores from the Callitris glaucophylla- C. intratropica complex throughout continental Australia.  There is an opportunity to study the tracheid structure from these cores in order to understand how they vary across huge climate gradients.  This project is of fundamental ecological interest and is globally significant given the continental-scale of the sampling.

Testing the ecophysiological tolerance levels of Callitris species in the greenhouse

Potential supervisors: David Bowman and Tim Brodribb

We have been undertaking a number of glasshouse experiments studying the tolerance of Callitris species to extreme drought stress and have discovered these native Australian conifers are incredibly drought tolerant.  We would like to extend our research program to investigate the response of Callitris to elevated CO2 and temperature in order to understand why this genus is so restricted in the modern Australian landscape and how climate change may affect the various species’ geographic distributions.

Monitoring rainforest boundary dynamics in northern Tasmania

Potential supervisors: David Bowman and Brett Murphy

Expansion of rainforest into surrounding eucalypt forest forms part of a globally recognised pattern.  The causes for the expansion are uncertain and Tasmania can provide insights into this global process and help evaluate the conjecture that Aboriginal landscape burning was the primary cause of the restriction of rainforests. The advent of digital analyses of aerial photography has revolutionised the study of vegetation dynamics and provided insights into the past and current drivers of woody vegetation expansion.  This project would undertake a broad-scale analysis of the correlates of movements of forest-grassland boundaries that have been identified by the recent detailed vegetation map of Tasmania. For selected sites the aerial photographic record has been analysed and ground-truthing is required to understand the nature of the observed boundary changes.  This approach forms part of a current program studying rainforest boundaries down the east coast of Australia.

Land use history and soil carbon in Tasmanian landscapes

Potential supervisors: David Bowman and Mark Hovenden

Soil carbon is one of the major unknowns in the terrestrial carbon cycle.  Estimates of soil C storage range from being twice to half that of the standing biomass.  A proportion of the C in the soil also has extremely long residence times, on the order of millennia, which means that soil C stocks create longer term storage than above ground stocks. Thus, being able to accurately gauge soil C stocks and turnover in response to different land management interventions is crucial if land managers are to trade C.  There is enormous uncertainty of the importance of ‘legacy effects’ of management history, particularly land clearance and bushfires.  As part of a current ARC grant with Greening Australia there is an opportunity to evaluate the effect of past land management practices on soil carbon in the Tasmanian midlands.