Kerry Bridle

University of Tasmania · School Geography

Most alpine ecosystems are subject to non-native species invasion as climate warms and human disturbance increases. Therefore, it is important to identify the main barriers and facilitators of alpine plant invasions. While there is much research in continental alpine areas, there is limited research in maritime environments, which have distinctive...

Context It is important to understand the way in which wild herbivore grazing affects decadal vegetation dynamics after cessation of unnatural disturbances, especially in a context of climate change. Aims We investigated the decadal effects of different grazing regimes on treeless subalpine vegetation recovery from stock grazing and burning, on sit...

We synthesise the findings from 10 years of ecological restoration in the Midlands of Tasmania, Australia, captured in the series of 14 papers in this special issue of Ecological Management and Restoration. The papers illustrate how expertise from disciplines as diverse as law, economics, social sciences, the arts, education, zoology, botany, genet...

‘Environmentalism without Fanaticism’, a sticker on a fridge in a farmer’s house, encapsulates attitudes to conservation and restoration over the past 30 years for five farming families in the Northern Midlands. Their willingness to participate in long-term programmes such as the Tasmania Island Ark project stems from their experience of living in...

Seasonal pasture monitoring can increase the efficiency of pasture utilization in livestock grazing enterprises. However, manual monitoring of pasture over large areas is often infeasible due to time and financial constraints. Here, we monitor changes in botanical composition in Tasmania, Australia, through application of supervised learning using...

Seasonal pasture monitoring can increase the efficiency of pasture utilization in livestock grazing enterprises. However, manual monitoring of pasture over large areas is often infeasible due to time and financial constraints. Here, we monitor changes in botanical composition in Tasmania, Australia, through application of supervised learning using...

The pastoral and agropastoral systems of the Borana in southern Ethiopia are highly vulnerable to climate change and its impacts. Assistance to enable these smallholders to successfully adapt to future climate change in locally relevant ways can be usefully informed by the analysis and better under-standing of past and ongoing adaptation. We conduc...

Land use in many areas is highly contested. An understanding of the nature of such conflicts, and of spatial variation in their intensity, is required to develop planning solutions. We present a novel process for attaining these outcomes which involves mapping of values and potential conflict between stakeholders determined using participatory GIS...

Alpine plant species are considered to have a precarious near future in a warming world, especially where endemic on mountains without a nival zone. We investigated how and why snow patch vegetation and snow incidence varied over recent decades in Tasmania, Australia. Landsat images between 1983 and 2013 were used to calculate the proportion of cle...

Farmers are continually striving to adapt to Australia's highly variable climate. As a function of global warming, future climatic conditions will present further challenges, but may also present many new opportunities for farmers. We involved a range of rural communities via 14 workshops across a range of Australia's large-scale broadacre cropping...

We experimentally determined how an apparently unpalatable and fire-sensitive shrub, Richea acerosa (Lindley) F.Muell., responded to the single and interactive effects of grazing and burning over 3-24 years at two subalpine sites in Tasmania. At the Middlesex Plains site, a low-intensity burn killed most individuals of the species 3 years after fir...

This study investigates the perception of historic changes in climate and associated impact on local agriculture among smallholders in pastoral/agropastoral systems of Borana in southern Ethiopia. We drew on empirical data obtained from farm household surveys conducted in 5 districts, 20 pastoral/agropastoral associations and 480 farm households. U...

Simple This paper documents the dynamics of Australian thoroughbred jump racing in the 2012, 2013, and 2014 seasons with the aim of informing debate about risks to horses and the future of this activity. We conclude that the safety of Australian jump racing has improved in recent years but that steeplechases are considerably riskier for horses tha...

Our natural resource base is the primary source of our wealth and well-being. This means that looking after land, water and the other species with which we share the country underpins sustainability. Although there are some good news stories, widespread trends of continuing degradation indicate that we are unlikely to pass on the country to future...

We used a participatory approach and a rural livelihoods framework to explore the knowledge and capacity of southeast Queensland graziers to adapt to climate change. After being presented with information on climate change projections, participants identified biophysical and socio-economic opportunities and challenges to adaptation. Graziers identi...

Permanent pastures, which include sown, native and naturalised pastures, account for 4.3 Mha (56%) of the national land use in Australia. Given their extent, pastures are of great interest with respect to their potential to influence national carbon (C) budgets and CO2 mitigation. Increasing soil organic C (SOC) mitigates greenhouse gases while pro...

Spatial prioritisation for NRM in Australia aims to support decisions about where scarce resources should be invested to create the best possible outcomes. Many NRM objectives or goals require identification of regions and then localities for such investment. This guide was developed through action research with Tasmanian NRM organisations to help...

Our natural resource base is the primary source of our wealth and well-being. This means that looking after land, water and the other species with which we share the country underpins sustainability. Although there are some good news stories, widespread trends of continuing degradation indicate that we are unlikely to pass on the country to future...

We tested the degree to which parent material, climate, vegetation and topography influenced the characteristics of alpine soils at two scales: across the full range of alpine vegetation in Australia and in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales, where geological relationships with soils may be obscured by the aeolian deposition of sediment and the...

Tree cover has declined markedly since European settlement in the agricultural areas of Australia due to land clearing and natural and stress-induced senescence of remnant trees combined with widespread regeneration failure. These decreases in tree cover have seldom been quantified on a landscape scale, but are important in understanding losses in...

A glasshouse study was conducted under ideal conditions to determine leaf appearance, elongation, and senescence rates along with life span and leaf length characteristics of four grass species: wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), brown back wallaby grass (Rytidosperma duttonianum (Cashmore) Connor and Edgar), phalaris (Phalaris aquatica L.), and annual...

We ask how and why mainland Australia and Tasmania differ in the natural and cultural history of alpine fire. Indigenous people seem unlikely to have extensively burned the alpine landscape in either of mainland Australia or Tasmania, whereas anthropogenic fire increased markedly after the European invasion. In Tasmania, where lightning ignition is...

We investigated the hypothesis that interdisciplinarity is being explicitly taught behind the façade of traditional disciplines. We interviewed 14 academics (seven geographers and seven agricultural scientists) about their teaching in the inherently interdisciplinary field of natural resource management. Our teachers were generally well informed ab...

Traditionally agricultural production in western countries has been driven by commodity markets, where farmers are price-takers, dependent on market demands. Agricultural intensification combined with the globalisation of markets and declining terms of trade for many farmers have all impacted on farm land management decisions, which in turn had imp...

Fire appears to be a rare event in alpine vegetation, suggesting that its effects might be more persistent than in most lowland vegetation types. However, it has been suggested that the Australian alpine biota is resilient to infrequent large fires. This paper describes decades-scale vegetation and soil change after fire in paired plots over fire b...

Limited information is available on the management and delivery of national-scale biodiversity projects. Even less information is available on such projects operating in agricultural matrices, particularly how they address the expectations of multiple stakeholders from paddock to farm, regional and national scales. This paper describes the approach...

A collaborative project between researchers, regional natural resource management organisations and landholders set out to explore three questions about the relationships between biodiversity and land use in Australia's mixed-farming landscapes: (1) the extent to which farm-scale measures of biodiversity were related to agricultural production; (2)...

Limited information is available on the management and delivery of national-scale biodiversity projects. Even less information is available on such projects operating in agricultural matrices, particularly how they address the expectations of multiple stakeholders from paddock to farm, regional and national scales. This paper describes the approach...

In Australia and overseas, park managers have long expressed concern about human waste management, especially along popular overnight walking tracks. Within Australia, states have implemented Minimal Impact Bushwalking guidelines (MIB) for day and overnight park users. In Tasmania, these guidelines advise walkers to bury their toilet waste in a hol...

In Australia and overseas, park managers have long expressed concern about human waste management, especially along popular overnight walking tracks. Within Australia, states have implemented Minimal Impact Bushwalking guidelines (MIB) for day and overnight park users. In Tasmania, these guidelines advise walkers to bury their toilet waste in a hol...

With almost half a million people and more than six times as many sheep, Tasmania has a rich history of wool production. In the drier parts of the island, graziers raise sheep partly using the native vegetation on their extensive runs. People, Sheep and Nature Conservation explores this use of the run country and the interaction of graziers, sheep...

Abstract Data on soils, vegetation and environment were collected between 510 and 1050m a. s. l. on Mt Sprent, southwestern Tasmania, traversing the Gymnoschoenus sphaerocephalus sedgeland-alpine vegetation boundary. One or more of the following horizons were found in almost all soil pits (downwards from the surface to the bed rock) fibric peat, he...

Summary An important conservation question for grazed areas of lowland subhumid Tasmania is ‘what effects do different, practical disturbance regimes have on native vegetation?’ An experiment designed to determine the single and interactive effects of fire and sheep grazing was established at four sites with distinct vegetation types. There were si...

An examination of the relative breakdown rates of unused toilet paper, facial tissues and tampons was undertaken in nine different environments typical of Tasmanian natural areas. Bags of the paper products (toilet paper, facial tissues, tampons) were buried for periods of 6, 12 and 24 months at depths of 5 and 15 cm. A nutrient solution simulating...

Very little research has been undertaken on the impacts of human toilet waste disposal in non-serviced sites in the wild. The objective of the present project was to determine the relative impacts of the mechanical disturbance of digging during the burial of toilet waste (faeces and toilet paper), and urination, on Tasmanian vegetation types that o...

The vegetation on either side of fire boundaries in the alpine zone of Mount Wellington, Tasmania, was surveyed in 1978 and 1998. This combination of spatial and temporal sampling gave data for 16, 31, 36 and 51 years since burning. These data were used to test for convergence in vegetation characteristics through time between the areas burned in 1...

Photographs of 84 plots in alpine vegetation, largely consisting of fjaeldmark and bolster heath, on Hill One, Southern Range, Tasmania, were taken in both 1989 and 2000 to compare cover characteristics. Between these two observations, vegetation cover declined in the fjaeldmark, largely as a result of erosion. Declines also occurred on the active...

Some species and genera of tall herbs that are widespread both in Tasmanian and in mainland Australian alpine vegetation are dominant or codominant over large areas in the Australian Alps, while being typically subordinate species in Tasmania. This difference has been attributed to the impact of vertebrate herbivores, which are abundant in the Tasm...

Long-term data from six sites in treeless subalpine and alpine vegetation in central Tasmania are used to document change in vegetation cover and life form dominance over time. All sites have been disturbed by burning and domestic stock grazing in the past. Although burning ceased at least 8 yr before initial measurements were taken, stock grazing...

Long-term data from six sites in treeless subalpine and alpine vegetation in central Tasmania are used to document change in vegetation cover and life form dominance over time. All sites have been disturbed by burning and domestic stock grazing in the past. Although burning ceased at least 8 yr before initial measurements were taken, stock grazing...

The existence of two 25-year-old grazing exclosures on Liawenee Moor, Eastern Central Plateau, Tasmania, created an opportunity to investigate the impacts of vertebrate herbivores on treeless subalpine vegetation. There were three treatments: sheep-, native herbivore- and rabbit-grazed; native herbivore- and rabbit-grazed; no grazing. The amount of...

Data on floristics, structure and environment were collected from quadrats throughout the geographic range of alpine vegetation in Australia. These data were used to explore the floristic and environmental relationships of ten alpine vegetation formations: bolster heath, coniferous heath, heath, alpine sedgeland, fjaeldmark, tall alpine herbfield,...

Australian alpine vegetation is confined to the southeast of the continent and the island of Tasmania. It exhibits strong geographic patterns of floristic variation. These patterns have been attributed to variation in edaphic conditions resulting from geographic variation in substrate, climate and glacial history. This edaphic hypothesis is tested...

Tall alpine herb field is largely absent from the Tasmanian alpine zone. This absence has been attributed to marsupial grazing. Small islands in the upper Ouse River valley are partly dominated by Craspedia paludicola, a showy tall alpine herb. The herbs dominate on the upstream ends of the islands. The surrounding vegetation on the banks is mainly...

Regular altitudinal sampling of the vascular plant species composition of treeless vegetation on Mount Sprent, Tasmania revealed gradual change between 510 and 820 m, and between 930 and 1050 m, but steep change between 830 and 920 m. The zone of sharp change was the boundary between lowland sedgeland dominated by Gymnoschoenus sphaerocephalus and...