
Jessica A RowlandQueensland University of Technology | QUT · School of Biology and Environmental Science
Jessica A Rowland
PhD, MSc, BSc
About
23
Publications
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Introduction
I am a conservation scientist focused on evaluating the effectiveness of conservation actions and understanding risks to ecosystems to inform environmental policy and management. I am currently developing rapid evidence review methods to evaluate the effectiveness of management actions to inform ecosystem conservation. I am also conducting IUCN Red List of Ecosystems assessments for alpine ecosystems and exploring how to effectively incorporate climate change impacts in ecosystem risk assessment
Additional affiliations
February 2020 - December 2024
Publications
Publications (23)
Snowpatch plant communities, which occur in parts of alpine landscapes where snow accumulates and persists well into the summer, are highly sensitive to climate change. The formation of persistent soil seed banks is recognised as a critical component of a plant community’s resilience to a changing environment. However, our understanding of the ecol...
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity set the agenda for global aspirations and action to reverse biodiversity loss. The GBF includes an explicit goal for maintaining and restoring biodiversity, encompassing ecosystems, species and genetic diversity (goal A), targets for ecosystem prot...
Climate change has pervasive impacts on Earth’s ecosystems, but the diversity and complexity of ecosystems makes estimating the severity of impacts and the resulting risk of collapse difficult. In this perspective, we conceptualise the challenge of understanding how climate change alters ecosystems, and how to reliably measure those changes in ecos...
Experts can provide valuable information to fill knowledge gaps in published research on management effectiveness, particularly for threatened ecosystems, for which there is often limited evidence and the need for prompt intervention to ensure their persistence. One such ecosystem, alpine peatland, is threatened by climate change and other pressure...
Threatened ecosystem conservation requires an understanding of the effectiveness of management and the challenges hindering successful protection and recovery. Bringing together researchers, land managers and policymakers to identify key threats, management needs, and knowledge gaps provides a unified account of the evidence and tools needed to imp...
As the United Nations develops a post-2020 global biodiversity framework for the Convention on Biological Diversity, attention is focusing on how new goals and targets for ecosystem conservation might serve its vision of ‘living in harmony with nature’1,2. Advancing dual imperatives to conserve biodiversity and sustain ecosystem services requires r...
Male signals that advertise dominance are often also attractive to females, but female signals advertising dominance can make them less attractive to males. For example, in species where males are larger than females, low-frequency male vocalisations are expected to be selected by intra-sexual selection, inter-sexual selection and selection to iden...
Peatlands support unique biodiversity and provide essential ecosystem services, such as regulating climate and providing freshwater and food. However, land-use change, resource extraction and changing climates are threatening peatlands globally. Restoring degraded peatlands requires re-establishing the key features that drive these ecosystems – the...
Despite substantial conservation efforts, the loss of ecosystems continues globally, along with related declines in species and nature’s contributions to people. An effective ecosystem goal, supported by clear milestones, targets and indicators, is urgently needed for the post-2020 global biodiversity framework and beyond to support biodiversity co...
Biodiversity indicators are used to inform decisions and measure progress toward global targets, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Indicators aggregate and simplify complex information, so underlying information influencing its reliability and interpretation (e.g., variability in data and uncertainty in indicator values) can...
Ecosystems are central to the definition of biodiversity. Sustaining ecosystems is essential for safeguarding species, ecosystem processes, and the natural capital and ecosystem services on which people rely. A new goal and associated action targets for ecosystem conservation form a core part of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (OEWG 202...
It is nearly three decades since the world recognized the need for a global multilateral treaty aiming to address accelerating biodiversity loss. However, biodiversity continues to decline at a concerning rate. Drawing on lessons from the implementation of the current strategic plan of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the 2010 Aichi Targe...
Governments have committed to global targets to slow biodiversity loss and sustain ecosystem services. Biodiversity state indicators that measure progress toward these targets mostly focus on species, while indicators synthesizing ecosystem change are largely lacking. We fill this gap with three indices quantifying past and projected changes in eco...
Ongoing ecosystem degradation and transformation are key threats to biodiversity. Measuring ecosystem change towards collapse relies on monitoring indicators that quantify key ecological processes. Yet little guidance is available on selecting and implementing indicators for ecosystem risk assessment. Here, we reviewed indicator use in ecological s...
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Ecosystems is a powerful tool for classifying threatened ecosystems, informing ecosystem management, and assessing the risk of ecosystem collapse (that is, the endpoint of ecosystem degradation). These risk assessments require explicit definitions of ecosystem collapse, which are...
Thermal properties of tree hollows play a major role in survival and reproduction of hollow-dependent fauna. Artificial hollows (nest boxes) are increasingly being used to supplement the loss of natural hollows; however, the factors that drive nest box thermal profiles have received surprisingly little attention. We investigated how differences in...
All original data.
Biophysical model and POSEM trial data.
(CSV)
Daytime maximum, mean and minimum (± SD) ambient temperature (°C).
Data were recorded at: (a) five bat box sites in Melbourne, Australia, from 10 February to 15 April 2015, and at the La Trobe University Zoology Reserve (the glider and possum box site) during (b) summer (7–29 January 2015) and (c) winter (10 July to 1 August 2015).
(PPTX)
All original data.
Glider and possum box temperature data.
(CSV)
All original data.
Bat box temperature data.
(CSV)
Hundreds of species rely on tree-hollows for shelter and breeding, however land-clearing has reduced their availability worldwide. While nest-boxes are deployed extensively in hollow-deficient habitats, their thermal value for arboreal marsupials compared to tree-hollows is unclear, particularly in temperate environments. We analysed thermal regime...