Enhancing the health and resilience of ecosystems

Soil Biodiversity and Functions in the Cumberland Plain Woodland

PhD Candidate: Dylan Bristol

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

Project Summary: Threats from urbanization have considerable impacted the connectivity of the Cumberland Plain Woodland in addition to polluting the soils from runoff and land use changes which has led to the overall degradation of many areas of the Cumberland Plains. There is a significant knowledge gap in understanding the current rates of ecosystem processes, such as nutrient cycling, and how soil attributes relate with these functions in the Cumberland Plain Woodland. Only some areas within the Cumberland Plain Woodland are monitored and this monitoring preliminarily focuses on aboveground metrics of health. This ultimately means we know very little about what is happening belowground in most areas of the Cumberland Plain. My objective is to create a baseline dataset of the current state of many different areas of different health which range throughout the Cumberland Plain Woodland. In doing so, I intend on intensely surveying the soils of 50 sites with remnant vegetation throughout the Cumberland Plain bioregion. I intend on uncovering and understanding the links between soil physical, chemical and biological attributes with soil functioning and vegetation integrity within the Cumberland Plain Woodland. This will generate baseline data of the current state of the Cumberland Plain Woodland that can be used to infer how health is changing overtime to potentially guide conservation and management practices.