Understanding bird community condition

Theme: Marine biology and ocean science; Earth Sciences

Description: 

We have developed cutting-edge metrics for understanding bird community condition, where for a given 2ha 20 minute bird survey, we can identify which community it is from and what condition it is in. This metric is designed to allow community condition to be tracked 1) in existing datasets to understand long-term nation-wide trends, and 2) through time at specific sites, facilitating its use in biodiversity accounting and monitoring projects. The exact project would depend on the interests of the student but would likely involve exploring a specific community as a case study in the context of either 1) nation-wide trends, or 2) changes at specific sites.
 

Additional Information: This project would involve working as part of an existing ARC Linkage project with partnerships with BirdLife Australia, Bush Heritage Australia, Accounting for Nature and the QLD Department of Environment and Science. The ideal candidate would have an ecology/conservation background, some GIS skills and familiarity with coding in R, or a willingness to learn.

Contact: Dr Hannah Fraser