Flow-MER Fridays – Webinar
Identification, characterisation and management of refuge habitat
Presenter: Dr. Joanne Bennett
When: Friday, 21st August 2020, 10:30am-11:30am AEST
Webinar Topic: Identification, characterisation and management of refuge habitat
As part of the Flow-MER Biodiversity Basin Theme, we are learning and understanding more about aquatic refugia habitats, their characteristics, and the species they support.
Refugia are places that stay wet and cool when it’s hot and dry. They are important because they enable flora and fauna to persist during low/no flow and then recover, disperse and recolonise following the return of flow. Examples of refugia are deep waterholes in intermittent streams, perennial waterbodies, areas that receive cool groundwater inputs and shady riparian areas.
Join us on Friday, when we will talk about the work being undertaken to locate refugia and identify how refuge habitats change over time. We will explore two questions:
Joanne is a community ecologist, with a primary research goal of discovering the general principles that are essential to effectively manage biodiversity under global changes, particularly land-use and climate change. She is an experienced water resource manager, with a PhD on investigating how the spatio-temporal distribution of vegetation and avian assemblages were interactively and additively affected by climate drying and land-use change. She has worked on projects investigating how species physiology effects their vulnerability to climate change across aquatic and terrestrial realms and how anthropogenic change is affecting plant reproduction at global scales. Her experience includes a wide range of taxa including mammals, reptiles, invertebrates, birds and vegetation in a wide of ecosystems.
The Flow-MER program team acknowledge and respect the Traditional Owners as the First Peoples of the lands and waters of the Murray Darling Basin. We recognise their unique ability to care for Country and their deep spiritual connection to it. We honour Elders past and present whose knowledge and wisdom has ensured the continuation of culture and traditional practices. We are committed to genuinely partner, and meaningfully engage, with Traditional Owners and Aboriginal communities to support the protection of Country, the maintenance of spiritual and cultural practices and their broader aspirations in the 21st century and beyond. In particular we acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the seven Selected Areas where Flow-MER research is focussed.
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The Flow-MER program team acknowledge and respect the Traditional Owners as the First Peoples of the lands and waters of the Murray Darling Basin.
We recognise their unique ability to care for Country and their deep spiritual connection to it. We honour Elders past and present whose knowledge and wisdom has ensured the continuation of culture and traditional practices.
We are committed to genuinely partner, and meaningfully engage, with Traditional Owners and Aboriginal communities to support the protection of Country, the maintenance of spiritual and cultural practices and their broader aspirations in the 21st century and beyond. In particular we acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the seven Selected Areas where Flow-MER research is focussed.
Artwork credit: Wiradjuri Artist Rebecca Salcole
Artwork credit: Wiradjuri Artist Rebecca Salcole
The Goulburn River is known by several names as it travels first through Taungurung country in the hilly upper and middle reaches. Here, the river is called Waring.
As the river meanders downstream of Murchison and into the northern flatlands, the river winds through Yorta Yorta country and is called Kaiela, meaning ‘father of waters’. Eventually, the river flows to a confluence with the River Murray near Echuca. This confluence of rivers is known as Koninner.
We acknowledge and respect the Traditional Owners of the country this story has been written about, Taungurung and Yorta Yorta, and all the countries through which the Goulburn river flows. This story was written on Ngunnawal country. Sovereignty was never ceded, and we pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging.