Managing and monitoring for improved biodiversity outcomes using state-and-transition models

Project start date: 01/07/2024
Project end date: 30/06/2027
NESP funding: $858,203 (GST-excl.)

Agricultural landscapes in Australia have historically been places of ecological decline. Habitat loss and fragmentation from land clearing, overgrazing by livestock and feral herbivores, inappropriate fire regimes and weed invasion in remnant vegetation are among the factors that pose challenges for conservation in these landscapes. Yet agricultural landscapes retain important conservation values, and new incentives for nature-positive outcomes will provide opportunities for changes in farm management that improve biodiversity outcomes.

The vulnerable red-lored whistler (Pachycephala rufogularis) is a mallee specialist. Photo JJ Harrison CC BY-SA 3.0.

Decision-support tools can help both private and public land managers understand the complex interactions between individual threats to biodiversity, and assess the potentially synergistic benefits of their activities to manage them. This project will use state-and-transition models (STMs) to develop modelling tools to guide land management decisions in two contrasting but complementary contexts in agricultural landscapes: safeguarding the Mallee Bird Ecological Community in the Murray Darling Depression bioregion; and determining the extent to which regenerative management practices can maintain or improve biodiversity on farms without compromising production or profit.

The project will develop conceptual and spatially explicit STMs that demonstrate the outcomes of pursuing different management options (including a ‘business as usual’ approach), and can be adopted as operational plans by land managers. It will also identify gaps in knowledge or uncertainty about outcomes in both nature conservation and farm production contexts.

Key research areas

The research on the Mallee Bird Ecological Community will:

• develop a regional STM of mallee ecosystem dynamics across South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria that incorporates habitat condition and species interactions
• downscale the regional STM to a landscape-level STM in two case studies, focussing on how management interventions may benefit the Mallee Bird Ecological Community 
• develop a suite of tools to assist land managers plan their activities to improve long-term outcomes for the Mallee Bird Ecological Community and their key habitats, and monitor the success of these actions.

The research assessing how changes in farm management can deliver nature-positive outcomes will:

• use expert elicitation to define the current condition states of agricultural land in three regions (Tasmanian Midlands, Western Victoria Volcanic Plains, Naracoorte Coastal Plain) and the likelihood that alternative fertiliser management and/or strategic livestock grazing will trigger a transition between the condition states
• test and validate the STM using a ‘space-for-time’ substitution in paddocks with different management histories on up to 12 farms per region
• integrate the results from 1 and 2 to refine the STM in each study region, and develop a monitoring framework for assessing ecosystem condition in production areas.

Pathway to impact

This research will improve biodiversity outcomes in agricultural landscapes by:

1. Developing a modelling toolkit (incorporating maps and scenario simulations) that allows land managers to assess how their activities (for example, prescribed burning, waterpoint management, strategic grazing) will affect habitat condition and species interactions to either the benefit or detriment of biodiversity, and incorporate this knowledge into their planning.
2. Quantifying the probability of the success of management interventions in agricultural landscapes for improving biodiversity outcomes, facilitating integration into market-based incentives such as the Nature Repair Market.
3. Providing evidence-based and management-oriented advice on how changes in land management can improve ecosystem condition for better outcomes for threatened species in agricultural landscapes.