PhD Candidate: Dylan Bristol

PhD Supervisors: Associate Professor Uffe Nielsen (WSU), Professor Jeff Powell (WSU), Dr Yolima Carillo (WSU)

Project Summary: Ecosystem degradation is a threat to plant diversity and functional resilience of native ecosystems to the expected extreme events of climate change and changes in land use and pollution from urbanization. Understanding the effects of ecosystem degradation on plant performance and broader ecosystem functions is one of the many ongoing challenges that conservationists face when aiming to promote a sustainable native ecosystem. My objectives for this chapter are to (1) assess how nutrient and heavy metal pollution impact native plant diversity and how this is related to changes in soil functions and soil biota and (2) to relate how native plants and ecosystem functions change and recover from extreme climate events under differing soil pollution conditions typically experienced in the Cumberland Plain Woodland. To do this, I will create a pot experiment using pristine soils sowing in high diversity of native understory seeds and exposing them to heavy metal and nutrient pollution, followed by extreme drought and heat wave events. I will assess the recovery of the activity of soil biology after the extreme events to look at both resistance and resilience to extreme events.