Bertram Ostendorf

University of Adelaide · School of Earth and Environmental Sciences

Grapevine virus-associated disease such as grapevine leafroll disease (GLD) affects grapevine health worldwide. Current diagnostic methods are either highly costly (laboratory-based diagnostics) or can be unreliable (visual assessments). Hyperspectral sensing technology is capable of measuring leaf reflectance spectra that can be used for the non-d...

Contemplation of potential strategies to adapt to a changing and variable climate in agricultural cropping areas depends on the availability of geo-information that is at a sufficient resolution, scale and temporal length to inform these decisions. We evaluated the efficacy of creating high-resolution, broad-scale indicators of yield from simple mo...

Effective monitoring of arid and semi-arid rangelands around the world is essential to understand and combat degradation caused by anthropogenic use and facilitate effective management practices. Remote sensing technologies provide ideal approaches for enhancing traditional on-ground monitoring. However, while broad-scale monitoring of vegetation i...

This work examines the diurnal and seasonal variability of near-surface temperature and humidity at several large areas with high population density within the Maritime Continent using the Bureau of Meteorology Atmospheric Regional Reanalysis (BARRA) 12-km-resolution dataset that covers the period 1990–2019. The diurnal cycle is examined in detail,...

Agricultural productivity in dryland areas can strongly decrease with wind erosion. However, wind erosion events currently cannot be predicted. Here, we show that a comprehensive model of daily horizontal sediment flux with high spatio-temporal resolution can quantify the impact of surface wind erosion in different regions in South Australia with d...

More frequent and intense heatwaves in the last decade have challenged humanitarian, health and meteorological authorities to mitigate impact. Meteorological heatwave monitoring and prediction services vary between heatwave definitions which either include humidity or are based only on temperature. Incorporation of humidity into human health heatwa...

Plant viral diseases result in productivity and economic losses to agriculture, necessitat-ing accurate detection for effective control. Lab-based molecular testing is the gold standard forproviding reliable and accurate diagnostics; however, these tests are expensive, time-consuming,and labour-intensive, especially at the field-scale with a large...

The rising frequency of heat-related hazards as a result of climate change will increasingly affect heat-sensitive infrastructure assets. Recent studies quantify the heat-related risk to infrastructure, with some exploration of individual mitigation strategies, however missing in literature is an infrastructure sector-transferable and comprehensive...

Landholder support and participation is essential to the success of feral cat management, and landholders in various locations with particular land use types are affected differently by the presence of feral cats and by the management approach applied to control them. We used a landholder questionnaire to assess attitudes towards feral cats and lev...

Soil erosion is a major cause of land degradation globally and requires consistent and continuous monitoring methods to ensure future agricultural productivity and soil security. Therefore, tools investigating the impact and frequency of erosive events are crucial for land managers and policymakers to apply corrective measures for better erosion ma...

The use of drones in wildlife research and management is increasing. Recent evidence has demonstrated the impact of drones on animal behavior, but the response of nocturnal animals to drone flight remains unknown. Utilizing a lightweight commercial drone, the behavioral response of southern hairy-nosed wombats (Lasiorhinus latifrons) to drone fligh...

Context: Effective vineyard decision making at strategic and operational timescales requires consideration of many factors, including vineyard design and management options, exogenous factors that are outside of the decision maker's control such as climate/weather, and desired outcomes such as yield and grape composition attributes. Process-based m...

Crop water status and irrigation requirements are of great importance to the horticultural industry due to changing climatic conditions leading to high evaporative demands, drought and water scarcity in semi-arid and arid regions worldwide. Irrigation scheduling strategies based on evapotranspiration (ET), such as regulated deficit irrigation, requ...

Operational plans are a key element in community forestry in Nepal. However, the relevance of these plans to forest user groups (FUGs) is under scrutiny. This study investigates the usefulness of operational plans against the backdrop of knowledge, capacity and management practices of FUGs. Data were collected from 13 operational plans, 16 group di...

Modern satellite imaging offers radical new insights of the challenges and opportunities confronting traditional Aboriginal ecology and land use in Australia’s Western Desert. We model the likely dynamics of historic and precontact desert land use using Earth observation data to identify the distribution of suitable foraging habitats. Suitability w...

Process-based crop models are a robust approach to assess climate impacts on crop productivity and long-term viability of cropping systems. However, these models require high-quality climate data that cannot always be met. To overcome this issue, the current research tested a simple method for scaling daily data and extrapolating long-term risk pro...

Invasive animals, such as feral cats, are considered non-threatening by some social groups due to their similarity to companion animals, and this can pose a threat to the success of invasive species management through lack of support. Feral cat management is undertaken across southern Australia, and it is therefore important to determine the social...

Human–wildlife conflicts threaten a huge diversity of species and affect the livelihoods of millions of people. There is an increasing need to develop management strategies that meet the needs of humans and wildlife. A variety of conflict mitigation measures are available, but for many species like the southern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus latif...

Cover: The cover image is based on the Research Article Reflecting on siliceous rocks in central Australia: Using advanced remote sensing to map ancient “tool‐stone‐ resources by Wallace Boone Law et al., https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.21776.

Understanding environmental factors influencing the abundance of species is important for developing strategies to manage wildlife effectively. Long‐term studies provide the most reliable information upon which to base management decisions. This is particularly important when considering threatening processes, like drought and climate change, and a...

Despite an ostensibly conducive policy environment in Nepal, community forest management has stagnated at a suboptimal level in delivery of the benefits stipulated in operational plans. This study assesses the current state of forest management against the backdrop of locally relevant factors that influence management strategies in 13 community for...

Driven by the high social costs and emotional trauma that result from traffic accidents around the world, research into understanding the factors that influence accident occurrence is critical. There is a lack of consensus about how the management of congestion may affect traffic accidents. This paper aims to improve our understanding of this relat...

Context: The translocation of southern hairy-nosed wombats (Lasiorhinus latifrons) has been suggested as a management tool to alleviate conflicts with the agricultural sector because of the damages caused by their burrowing activity. Translocation is widely used for removing problem animals from conflict areas, but its effectiveness is rarely adequ...

There is disagreement within the community regarding whether the distribution and abundance of southern hairy-nosed wombats (Lasiorhinus latifrons) is increasing or decreasing. On one hand, farmers and graziers within areas where wombats can be found have consistently claimed that wombat numbers have increased in recent decades. Conversely, conserv...

The southern hairy-nosed wombat has a fragmented distribution across the arid and semiarid regions of southern South Australia and south-eastern Western Australia. Its distribution and abundance are highly patchy, with large clusters of warrens in some areas but few to no warrens in adjacent areas. In order to understand why this occurs, we mapped...

HyMap™ airborne hyperspectral imagery was used to discriminate and map hydrated silica mineralization in the Dalhousie Springs area of central Australia. A spectral feature fitting algorithm was used to match laboratory reference spectra with image pixel spectra, producing a scaled goodness‐of‐fit raster map of silicified “tool‐stone” sources in ou...

This review examines the social aspects that influence feral cat management. In particular, it examines definitions and perceptions of feral cats as a species in different countries and across cultures. Using case studies from around the world, we investigate the factors that can influence public perceptions and social acceptance of feral cats and...

Traffic accidents impart both economic and social costs upon communities around the world, hence the desire for accident rates to be reduced. For this reduction to occur, the factors influencing the occurrence of accidents must be understood. The role of congestion in modifying accident risk has been widely studied, but consensus has not been reach...

The 2018-19 summer leapt into life in late November when Queensland experienced an extraordinary outbreak of extreme fire behaviour, with unusually hot, dry and windy conditions, which coincided with an extreme heatwave on Queensland's tropical east coast. The multi-year drought throughout most of Queensland and New South Wales, lack of Southern Oc...

Fires can considerably increase wind erosion risk in dryland agricultural regions. While wind erosion post-fire has been extensively studied in rangeland and grazing landscapes, limited work has considered post-fire erosion on annual plant communities and annual crops. Here we evaluated the relative spatial differences in patterns of sediment trans...

Long-term, continuous, accurate, daily weather records for precipitation, temperature and solar radiation are critical inputs for modelling long-term climate risk in cropping systems. However, comprehensive weather data often exhibit short record length and missing or inaccurate records, which can lead to inconsistencies. Using risk profiles (cumul...

Following up on two reports from the 1990s, we undertook a ground survey and analysed satellite imagery in order to determine whether there are any extant colonies of southern hairy-nosed wombats in south-western New South Wales. No evidence was found to confirm the continuing presence of wombats in the region.

We investigate the problem of tracking and planning for a UAV in a task to locate multiple radio-tagged wildlife in a three-dimensional (3D) setting in the context of our Tracker-Bots research project. In particular, we investigate the implementation of a 3D tracking and planning problem formulation with a focus on wildlife habitats in hilly terrai...

The establishment of an effective policy response to rising heatwave impacts is most effective when the history of heatwaves, their current impacts and future risks, are mapped by a common metric. In response meteorological agencies aim to develop seamless climate, forecast, and warning heat impact services, spanning all temporal and spatial scales...

Climate change increases variability and uncertainty of crop performance. Process-based crop growth models represent the complex spatio-temporal interactions between plants, atmosphere, and soils and enable realistic climate risk assessments of future crop yield. But they require continuous, detailed daily weather data. Probability distributions of...

Broad-scale abundance estimates of the southern hairy-nosed wombat population use a proxy measure based on counting the number of active burrows, which is multiplied by an index of ‘wombats/active burrow’. However, the extant indices were calculated in the 1980s, prior to the use of calicivirus to control rabbits, and used invasive monitoring metho...

Remotely sensed vegetation indices to measure crop growth through phenological metrics have a high potential for use in agricultural management. However, implementing the analytical routines from remote sensing data acquisition to relating vegetation index information to in-situ plant development and management is complex to even the most experienc...

The southern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus latifrons) is the faunal emblem of South Australia. It is also considered to be an agricultural pest, as its burrowing activities can cause significant damage to agricultural land and infrastructure. Unfortunately, much of our knowledge of this species' population dynamics is limited and/or out of date....

Food security globally depends primarily on three components: food availability, food access, and food utilization. Regional variations of these components may affect food security via spatial differences in natural, social or economic conditions and the interaction of these in a complex environmental system. It is important to understand the regio...

Poster presentation at the 2017 Australian Archaeological Association Conference - Melbourne.

Fuelwood derived from community forests of Nepal is critical for rural livelihoods. Supply of fuelwood is regulated through 5-year operational plans. The aim of this study was to evaluate the adequacy of operational plans in addressing the demand and supply of fuelwood in community forests of Nepal. Data was gathered f rom operational plans, househ...

Climate change will impact on rice food security in many parts of the world, including Bangladesh. Little attention has been given to understanding the impact of climate on rice yield for three main ecotypes (Aus, Aman, and Boro) in different areas of the country. The aim of this paper was to analyse the spatiotemporal dynamics of rice yield and cl...

Understanding factors determining the distribution of a species is critical for developing strategies and policies in natural resources management. The southern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus latifrons) is an excellent model species to examine species distribution patterns because of its conspicuous burrowing behaviour, making it possible to obtai...

The economics of establishing perennial species as renewable energy feedstocks has been widely investigated as a climate change adapted diversification option for landholders, primarily using net present value (NPV) analysis. NPV does not account for key uncertainties likely to influence relevant landholder decision making. While real options analy...

Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR) has been experiencing significant forest depletion since the 1980s, but there is little evidence to demonstrate the major causes and underlying drivers for the forest cover changes. In this study, we investigated the relationship between forest cover decrease and increase in the south of Lao PDR between 2006 a...

Satellite-derived surface elevation models are an important resource for landscape archaeological studies. Digital elevation data is useful for classifying land features, characterizing terrain morphology, and discriminating the geomorphic context of archaeological phenomena. This paper shows how remotely sensed elevation data obtained from the Jap...

Precision Agriculture (PA) recognizes and manages intra-field spatial variability to increase profitability and reduced environmental impact. Site Specific Crop Management (SSCM), a form of PA, subdivides a cropping field into uniformly manageable zones, based on quantitative measurement of yield limiting factors. In Mediterranean environments, the...

Background Rice (Oryza sativa) is the most important staple food for almost half of the global population. Improvement of rice yield is of global concern and is influenced by a wide variety of regional factors including climate and agricultural management. This research addresses the need to understand the relative influence of these factors and de...

Context Management of wildlife that may simultaneously be of conservation concern and pose problems for humans is difficult, particularly when knowledge of their population dynamics is elusive. Culling of southern hairy-nosed wombats (Lasiorhinus latifrons) is often carried out in agricultural areas, with no understanding of potential impacts on th...

Australia has one of the worst mammal extinction rates in the world, with translocations to refuge locations increasingly being advocated to help address problems of species decline. Offshore islands can function as these refuges, removing species from threatening processes and providing a source of animals for reintroduction. Historically, the foc...

We conducted a search of the historical records for any mention of hairy-nosed wombats in order to establish their likely distribution at the time of European settlement. The evidence suggests that there were two main groups of southern hairy-nosed wombats (Lasiorhinus latifrons) that were separated by Spencer Gulf in South Australia. The western g...

Burrows can provide refuge for both burrowing and non-burrowing species within harsh environments through protection from climatic extremes, water loss and predation. In Australia, however, despite having a rich diversity of burrowing mammals, little is known about the use of burrows by non-burrowing species. This study aimed to identify the extent...

The densely vegetated Fleurieu Peninsula Swamps south of Adelaide are listed nationally as critically endangered. They are key elements in landscape function, providing ecosystem services and supporting a range of threatened species. A rapid and progressive dieback of swamp vegetation has been observed in a number of these wetlands, but the causes...

A need exists in arid rangelands for effective monitoring of the impacts of grazing management on vegetation cover. Monitoring methods which utilize remotely-sensed imagery may have comprehensive spatial and temporal sampling, but do not necessarily control for spatial variation of natural variables, such as landsystem, vegetation type, soil type a...

Soil, an essential component of agricultural ecosystems, has high spatial variability. Plant growth reflects this variability in complex interactions with other factors such as rainfall and temperature. In the Mediterranean-type dryland cropping region of South Australia, water is the main driver of crop growth variability. Plant Available Water-ho...

Groundwater dependent wetlands in the South-East of South Australia face multiple threats associated with declining groundwater level and the interaction of this with climate change and increased risk of salinization. For effective wetland management at regional scales it is important that the spatial distribution and variability in wetland extent...

Riverbank collapses in the Lower River Murray threaten public infrastructure, private property and the safety of river users, and also provide significant challenges for environmental and river management. According to the inventory of the South Australian Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources (DEWNR), between 2007 and 2010, 50 riv...

Native vegetation around the world is under threat from historical and ongoing clearance, overgrazing, invasive species, increasing soil and water salinity, altered fire regimes, poor land management and other factors, resulting in a degradation of natural ecosystem services. Consequently, maintaining and improving native vegetation condition is a...

The world's extensive and often remote arid landscapes are receiving increasing attention to maintain their ecological and productive values. Monitoring and management of these lands requires indicators and evidence of ecosystem condition and trend, generally derived from widely distributed and infrequently repeated site-based records. However adeq...

Riverbank collapse is a natural part of the evolution of rivers. An unprecedented period of dry conditions and low flows between 2005 and 2010 led to more than 162 reported riverbank collapse-related incidents along the Lower River Murray, in South Australia (downstream of Lock 1 at Blanchetown to Wellington). On 4 February, 2009 a 60 × 20 m (70,00...

The aim of this project is to investigate the potential for identifying locations of persistent and/or expanding dieback in Fleurieu Peninsula swamps. Patch dynamics are a feature of swamps, so small areas of reduced plant vigour and death are to be expected. However, patches of dieback that persist for more than a few years or expand through time...

The aim of this project is to investigate the potential for identifying locations of persistent and/or expanding dieback in Fleurieu Peninsula swamps. Patch dynamics are a feature of swamps, so small areas of reduced plant vigour and death are to be expected. However, patches of dieback that persist for more than a few years or expand through time...