Ecological change in Australia

Brief description Over the past century, land surface temperatures have risen by almost 1 °C across the Australian continent. However, the ecological impacts of this change have not been systematically investigated. Rapid climate change poses significant new challenges for natural resource managers. The ability to successfully maintain the health and persistence of Australia’s biodiversity is dependent on an evolving body of knowledge about the ecological impacts of climate change. In order to develop a more explicit understanding of the link between climate and ecosystem responses, CSIRO and the Department of the Environment and Energy collaborated to examine how and where climate change has influenced Australian patterns of biodiversity over the past 100 years. This component of the project collected local knowledge of recent ecological change from people with close connections to the Australian environment (e.g. farmers, ecologists, naturalists) through a national online survey.