Big Scrub Landcare are now driving an innovative program to ensure that all plantings use genetically diverse planting stock to overcome potential inbreeding and build greater adaptability to climate change within the landscape. Dr Tony Parkes (AO) - retired organic chemist and merchant banker (turned rainforest restorer) - is the Founder and President of Big [...]
Rainforest restoration pioneers, Big Scrub Landcare, are again at the forefront of restoration ecology investigating solutions to the problem of genetic inbreeding in the hundreds of thousands of Big Scrub plantings. With the long term viability of the Big Scrub and associated investment at stake, they have developed a strategy to test for genetic diversity, [...]
The million dollar question of 'provenance' is eloquently described by Linda Broadhurst within the context of habitat fragmentation and climate change impacts. The talk simply explains the role of genetics in understanding inbreeding depressions and how they can arise from small population sizes or reduced parental numbers. A must see video for anyone who collects [...]
How do you ensure your restoration project will be resilient in times of changing climate and increased fragmentation across the landscape? Tein McDonald discusses with Linda Broadhurst the implications of population size, the parental gene pool and the significance of pollinators in ensuring genetic diversity and countering inbreeding depression. In this expanding field, the importance [...]
How do you work out what plants are suitable to grow in a climate changing world? Trevor Booth outlines a process using readily available web tools, the Atlas of Living Australia along side the Climate change in Australia website, which enables a variety of climate change scenarios to be considered and the location of potential [...]
Nola Hancock’s talk on local provenance and more distant seed sources tackled the big question. Does seed from the local site perform better? Nola’s conclusion is that mixing seed sources are best. In addition the disadvantages of local provenance were that due to the fragmentation of the landscape, population sizes are smaller which increases inbreeding [...]