E.ENV.1901 - Developing environmental indicators to strengthen on-farm reporting

Summary

The conservation of biodiversity is now recognised as a key component of initiatives to promote industry sustainability, such as in beef production (the Beef Sustainability Framework ) and sheep production (the Sheep Sustainability Framework). However, there are many challenges in developing biodiversity indicators for measuring sustainability in agricultural management and production.

The research reported here investigated the efficacy of environmental factors for predicting multiple aspects of biodiversity. The results can be used by farmers and Local Land Service staff to obtain location-specific information on management choices, and existing biodiversity aspects of a farm. Researchers and policy makers can use the results to inform the design of environmental monitoring projects that underpin sustainability frameworks.

Objectives

This project sought to compare and develop new biodiversity indicators. We also compared on-ground measurements, remotely-sensed measurements and climatic factors. The new biodiversity indicators we created were in the form of joint-species bird occupancy estimates.

Key findings

For biodiversity indicators in our study area, we first recommend standardised on-ground surveys. Such surveys give the greatest detail and most comprehensive biodiversity information, and can capture factors not studied in this project. If on-ground surveys are not possible then, due to the complicated relationships between environmental factors and biodiversity, we recommend the use of estimates from the joint-species models developed in this project. These estimates can be considered indicators that summarise plantings (vs remnants), Noisy Miner occupancy, woody canopy, climate and other attributes.

The most important influences of bird biodiversity were Noisy Miners, whether the patch was a planting, woody cover (within 500m and within 3km), and historical climate, particularly annual maximum temperature. However, the impact of these factors differs for different aspects of biodiversity. For example, bird species richness typically decreased with Noisy Miners whilst the vulnerable Superb Parrot was more likely to occur in the presence of Noisy Miners. Woody cover within 500m or 3km appeared to have little association to the number of reptile species detected.

Our sensitivity analysis suggests that developing similar joint-species models in similar ecosystems will require bird surveys across at least 230km North-South, and with more than one farm surveyed per 2500km2.

A key product of this project is the web app ‘Bird Checker: A Bird Occupancy Estimator’, allowing for scenario comparisons and biodiversity estimates. It is of great interest to Local Land Service staff for use in engagement and potentially reporting.

Benefits to industry

This project provides critical information for populating sustainability frameworks such as the Beef Sustainability Framework and the Sheep Sustainability Framework. For example, the approaches demonstrated in this project will be essential for demonstrating improvements in environmental outcomes as a function of management interventions such as establishing plantings on farms (see for example (Lindenmayer et al., 2012)).

Future research

We recommend that stakeholders take advantage of the unique web app ‘Bird Checker: a Bird Occupancy Estimator’ to gain better understanding of bird biodiversity in their local area. We also recommend research into implementing cost-effective and ecologically effective monitoring that ensures ongoing provision of high-quality monitoring data to populate sustainability frameworks.