Climate impacts on terrestrial nomadic birds of the Australian interior

Background: Australia experienced during 2010-11 rainfall of a scale and intensity that was unprecedented in recorded history, driven by the strongest La Niňa weather pattern since 1917. This resulted in a period of ecological boom and presented a research opportunity to study the impacts following such climatic events on the natural ecosystems of the interior. Since then, we have collected data, through extensive field surveys, on the terrestrial bird species of the interior, and have amassed a large distribution and abundance dataset. This PhD will explore the longer-term fluctuations in bird species in response to inter-annual climatic changes.
Aims: The project will continue to collect data on bird abundances, augmenting previous monitoring in the Australian outback. We will analyse these combined data to understand the role of climate and other factors in determining the distribution of terrestrial birds of the interior of Australia. Mobile and nomadic species are usually poorly protected within static protected area networks and the movements of such species are poorly understood. Here we intend to develop a better understanding of their ecology and hence how best to protect them against current and future threats.
Methodology: We collect data along long-distance (800km+) transects across the interior of SE and central Australia, using line and point censuses at regular intervals along the transects. We will repeat these transects for multiple years. The student will be involved in expedition organization and data collection and will lead subsequent analyses. We will deploy acoustic recoding equipment at sites in the interior to monitor changing bird activity over the seasons. The resultant occurrence and abundance datasets will be related to factors such as fine temporal-scale climatic data and remote-sensed vegetation productivity data. We will then create dynamic models to simulate the movement patterns of birds across the Australian interior and use these to inform conservation planning. We will explore the potential for climatic change to alter the occurrence of species and will explore how different conservation approaches could assist conserving mobile species in these environments.
Novelty: This work is both novel and timely, and takes advantage of a unique series of climatic fluctuations and concurrent bird abundance data. It will use cutting-edge analytical methods to develop real-world solutions to conservation issues. We are in a unique position to undertake the work, which will build on ongoing projects that are combining habitat suitability projections for species into dynamic dispersal models. The newly collected fine temporal and spatial datasets for bird distributions in a rarely studied system provide a unique opportunity to further our understanding of these systems and to ensure their conservation.
Training Received: The student will receive training in several key disciplines in conservation biology, including field census techniques, analytical and modelling techniques. They will join the Conservation Ecology Group at Durham (www.conservationecology.org), a dynamic team including a large cohort of postgraduate students, and will also spend time at the University of Queensland.
Maintenance Payment to successful student: £14,500 (approx.) p.a. plus tuition fee for 3.5 years (see http://www.dur.ac.uk/science.faculty/postgraduatefunding/ for further details).