Acacia pendula (Weeping Myall) in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales: early explorers’ journals, database records and habitat assessments raise doubts over naturally occurring populations.

This paper describes the vegetation of Port Stephens Shire and environs at the time of European settlement, defines the sequence of vegetation clearance since that time, and estimates the extent to which the pre-European vegetation represented Koala habitat. A study of historical records, newspapers, documents and reports was undertaken in conjunction with interviews with long-standing Port Stephens residents. The historical records show that Koalas were widespread and common during early settlement. Reconstruction of the original vegetation was based on descriptions by early explorers and settlers from the early 1800s, when settlement commenced. Most of the land on either side of the Hunter River was vegetated by Shrubby Tall Open Forest intermingling with either Open Swamp Forest, or VineFern Closed Forest, or cedar brush. The first area to be settled was the alluvial land on the banks of the rivers where the soil was fertile and well watered. Settlement proceeded rapidly in the western part of the Shire from the early 1800s, concentrating on the Lower Hunter and Williams Rivers, but not progressing to the east until much later (mid to late 1800s). The historical record was sufficiently detailed to allow reconstruction of Koala habitat distribution at the time of settlement. Ecological history is now emerging as a discipline that has far more than curiosity value. It can provide the essential framework for conserving and restoring those landscapes exploited in the first century of European settlement.

Aim There has been considerable debate about pre‐settlement stand structures in temperate woodlands in south‐eastern Australia. Traditional histories assumed massive tree losses across the region, whereas a number of recent histories propose that woodlands were originally open and trees regenerated densely after settlement. To reconcile these conflicting models, we gathered quantitative data on pre‐settlement stand structures in Eucalyptus–Callitris woodlands in central New South Wales Australia, including: (1) tree density, composition, basal area and canopy cover at the time of European settlement; and (2) post‐settlement changes in these attributes.Location Woodlands dominated by Eucalyptus species and Callitris glaucophylla, which originally occupied approximately 100,000 km2 in central New South Wales, Australia.Methods We recorded all evidence of pre‐settlement trees, including stumps, stags and veteran trees, from 39 relatively undisturbed 1‐ha stands within 16 State Forests evenly distributed across the region. Current trees were recorded in a nested 900 m2 quadrat at each site. Allometric relationships were used to estimate girth over bark at breast height, tree basal area, and crown diameter from the girth of cut stumps. A post‐settlement disturbance index was developed to assess correlations between post‐settlement disturbance and attributes of pre‐settlement stands.Results The densities of all large trees (> 60 cm girth over bark at breast height) were significantly greater in current stands than at the time of European settlement (198 vs. 39 trees ha−1). Pre‐settlement and current stands did not differ in basal area. However, the proportional representation of Eucalyptus and Callitris changed completely. At the time of settlement, stands were dominated by Eucalyptus (78% of basal area), whereas current stands are dominated by Callitris (74%). On average, Eucalyptus afforded 83% of crown cover at the time of settlement. Moreover, the estimated density, basal area and crown cover of Eucalyptus at the time of settlement were significantly negatively correlated with post‐settlement disturbance, which suggests that these results underestimate pre‐settlement Eucalyptus representation in the most disturbed stands.Main conclusions These results incorporate elements of traditional and recent vegetation histories. Since European settlement, State Forests have been transformed from Eucalyptus to Callitris dominance as a result of the widespread clearance of pre‐settlement Eucalyptus and dense post‐settlement recruitment of Callitris. Tree densities did increase greatly after European settlement, but most stands were much denser at the time of settlement than recent histories suggest. The original degree of dominance by Eucalyptus was unexpected, and has been consistently underestimated in the past. This study has greatly refined our understanding of post‐settlement changes in woodland stand structures, and will strengthen the foundation for management policies that incorporate historical benchmarks of landscape vegetation changes.

The purpose and context for the study relates to urban growth. Australian cities are experiencing particularly rapid urbanization, taking the form of land clearing to accommodate outward expansion as well as developing to higher densities in existing urban areas. Both forms of development degrade native biodiversity, resulting in loss of vegetation with the possibility that the remnant indigenous plants will become locally extinct. One endangered ecological community in Sydney, the Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrub (ESBS), still survives along some sections of Sydney’s heavily urbanized coastline. At the time of European settlement, the ESBS covered approximately 5300 ha, but it is now a highly fragmented 146 ha across 24 sites with some sites under imminent threat of development. Conservation legislation enacted by the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia has declared the ESBS as critically endangered. Despite recovery plans, in 2016 the NSW Threatened Species Scientific Committee indicated that the community faces an extremely high risk of extinction in Australia in the immediate future. A practical option in the face of declining open space in our cities is to examine the potential of urban rooftops for conserving and propagating threatened or endangered flora. While there is a limited amount of international research on using green roofs for endangered plant protection, there is no information from Australia about how green roofs perform in this geographic region. The approach taken in this research has been firstly, to review the current academic and “grey” literature from a global perspective to identify options for conserving endangered flora on green roofs. We derive an evidence-based research protocol to be used to test the green roof environment in Sydney for propagating the endangered ESBS. We establish the general applicability of green roofs for protecting vanishing flora through the literature review and conclude that our research design will be a suitable framework for the task for monitoring growth and germination performance over the ESBS community’s development cycle, with the longer-term objective of establishing a viable rooftop seed orchard.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Antipodean Myths Transformed: The Evolution of Australian Identity

Underestimated and severe: Small mammal decline from the forests of south-eastern Australia since European settlement, as revealed by a top-order predator

This year’s media preview of NIRIN, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (BoS) was a juggernaut experience. The press tour kicked off at 8:30 a.m. at the National Art School (NAS) and continued all day, with visits to Campbelltown Arts Centre (CAC), the Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW), Artspace, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCAA), and finally Cockatoo Island, which I ruefully regret bailing out on. (It had been a long and interesting day.) Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 lockdown, I only got to experience Cockatoo Island virtually. And of course, viewing any artworks via a digital platform is a very different experience from viewing them firsthand. Equally obviously, virtual viewing was not my first choice.This is all rather poignant, as in the last review I did for this journal, of the 2018 Biennale of Sydney, I had expressed the hope that an Australian Indigenous curator would direct the next one, with the inclusion of a few token white fellas, reversing the usual situation.Nirin, meaning “edge” in Wiradjuri (First Nation people of western New South Wales and Artistic Director Brook Andrew’s mother’s language), includes works by over one hundred artists and collectives, mainly representative of First Nations from across the globe. As Andrew said in his introduction at the National Art School, this Biennale “is artist led, First Nation led,” and has done away with any of the sorts of gratuitous theoretical frameworks that have driven previous Biennales. Many of the artists included in NIRIN are often overlooked in more mainstream exhibitions, and in fact some don’t participate in the artworld at all in a traditional sense but are drawn from other creative areas: Kylie Kwong, for example, is a chef, television presenter, and author. Art and an artist’s practice do not necessarily need a specific result that ends up being sold in a commercial gallery or is otherwise part of the art market. The process is as important as the outcome and sometimes the outcome can be a failure. It is bureaucracy that has time deadlines and needs everything finished, realized, and completed. This exhibition challenges the simplistic ways in which Western societies tend to understand and conflate First Nations peoples. In Australia, for instance, there is not one Indigenous language. In fact, there were over five hundred clans or “nations” in Australia at the time of European settlement, with 290–363 languages and many profoundly different belief systems and customs.Over six hundred works, performances, public programs, and events were planned for this exhibition but due to the COVID-19 lockdown, which began ten days after the exhibition was open to the public, these have had to be rethought. The public program NIRIN WIR (edge of the sky) was to be live and site-specific and inclusive, engaging directly with the audience. This too had to be reactualized in a more virtual way. Artists are, if anything, adaptable, and were not going to let a shutdown shut them down. There was more than one way to experience an exhibition. Barbara Moore, the Chief Executive Officer of the BoS offered a somewhat prescient foretaste in the media release: “Our job is to support artists and audiences and keep them safe. We are prepared, and we will do that with agility, creativity, respect and collaboration no matter what the world throws at us.”1From my own experience of organizing conferences and exhibitions, the Australian government makes it difficult for people from Third World countries to obtain visas. So, the Biennale team deserves an award for managing to obtain all the visas in time so that the majority of the artists could actually be here for the opening events. Given that the Biennale venues were only open for a short period it is ironic that for the first time (in my experience), a free guide with the program and floorplans with artist listings was widely distributed weeks before the BoS opened. There is also a handsome catalogue available—unlike with the previous BoS, which only produced an online version after most people had moved on.Some venues had a broad theme that explored First Nations issues. The AGNSW’s was DHAAGUN (earth, sovereignty, and working together), Artspace’s was MURIGUWAL GIILAND (different stories) and the major theme of Cockatoo Island, known as Wareamah in the Dharug language, was BAGARAY-BANG (healing). The central theme at the National Art School is BILA (river, environment) and it is here that femicide is considered. The old Cell Block Theatre in the school was once a place that housed female prisoners and its echoes seem to have penetrated some of the works. The Mexican artist Teresa Margolles’s Approximation to the Scenes of the Facts, (2020), which is housed in the NAS galleries, is an installation consisting of elongated hot plates dripped on by water collected from places in Sydney with a history of violence. The sound of the drops sizzling evokes images of burning and the blood-red plastic curtains that surround the installation reminded me of an abattoir, where carcasses are dismembered. Aesthetically it was a beautiful work, but for me it seemed to become darker the longer I stayed there.At CAC, Anders Sunna’s SOAÐA (2020) continues his use of art as a political tool to highlight the persecution of the Sámi, his people, by the Swedish government. His work uses the provocative image of an Aboriginal man giving Captain Cook a hiding over his knee, which continues his investigation and themes of the dispossessed.2 There is a sense of wry humor in this work that is apparent in a lot of the work throughout this Biennale, and humor is a very powerful weapon. Sunna’s father once told him, “You have three alternatives in life. One—you can start dispensing drugs and alcohol to escape. Two—you can commit suicide. Three—you can fight the rest of your life.”3I was intrigued, as well as irritated, by the presentation at the AGNSW of the Pitjantjatjara artist and activist leader Kunmanara Mumu Mike Williams’s (1952–2019) Kulilaya munu nintiriwa (Listen and learn) (2020). It was realized with the help of men in his community, his widow, Tuppy Ngintja Goodwin, and his collaborator Sammy Dodd, following his passing. The work incorporated a number of written textual protest pieces and images that resembled political banners. Well-meaning assistants, armed with iPads, rushed over to hold them in front of you, so you could see the words translated into English—I found this very intrusive and disruptive. I was confused by this, because while there were 290 to 360 spoken Aboriginal languages in Australia at the time of European settlement, none of these languages had a written form. I suspect that I would have enjoyed and engaged more with the work hearing the text spoken in the artist’s language, perhaps with a written translation on a wall plaque, rather than with a piece of technology, held by a person, translating the words.I was completely mesmerized by The Mulka Project’s immersive Watami Manikay (2020), also at the AGNSW. The Mulka Project, a group of Yolŋu digital artists, collaborated with others (Wukun Wanambi, Ishmael Marika, Patrina Munuŋgurr, Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu, Mundatjŋu Munuŋgurr, Arian Ganambarr-Pearson, Joseph Brady, and Rebecca Charlesworth) on the Indigenous mixed-media creation in order to realize their various performances, their place with each other, and their being in this world. In particular, Wukun’s underwater darkness, which had the viewer surrounded by swimming mullet in his Marrakulu clan’s salt water and Wukun singing his clan’s gapu manikay (salt water song line), was haunting and hypnotic. In the center, there was a stringybark tree as a ceremonial hollow log (larrakij) with the rising and falling waves stripping off its bark, and then painting it with ceremonial clay (gapan) for Wukun’s design (minytji). It felt like a meditation.The Turkish artist Erkan Özgen’s Wonderland (2016) at the MCAA is an example of an over-produced installation—it felt to me as if the piece had been overtaken by exhibition designers, much to the detriment of the work. It was a video of a deaf and mute boy from Kobani who is now in a refugee camp, telling his story about what had happened to his family. It is a highly personal account of the turbulent migration crisis gripping much of the Middle East and Europe. The installation included another two works by the artist, Purple Muslin (2018) and Aesthetics of Weapons (2018). The single-channel digital video works were projected onto an oversized triangular shape with each video occupying one side. The walls of the triangle almost reached the ceiling in the part of the gallery where it was sited, and the structure itself occupied most of the space. The artist wanted people to see and experience the after-effects of war. It is not meant to be gimmicky or clever. It’s real. Wonderland (2016) was shown in the Istanbul Biennial in 2017 as a solo work, with a single monitor on the floor. I think it would have worked better that way. I can barely remember the other two works, because I was so distracted by the shape, height, and girth of the construction that framed them.My initial feeling about this Biennale generally was that it felt “warm”—even festive—and soft through the use of material to make walls, to conceal and veil, and to create labyrinthine structures, such as that at the CAC, in order to separate works. Or walls that are giving and flexible and mostly obscuring the light, as at the MCAA with Madagascan Joël Andrianamearisoa’s THERE MIGHT BE NO OTHER PLACE IN THE WORLD AS GOOD AS WHERE I AM GOING TO TAKE YOU (2020), and at the AGNSW, where old masterpieces are covered by the same artist with porous black curtains, signaling how minorities are excluded from the representation of European history. The Spanish collective Colectivo Ayllu’s don’t blame us for what happened (2019–20) used sand on the floor at Artspace so that the ground you walk on gives a little.But then there is the quiet, a quiet seething. It infiltrates your thoughts the more you think about the works. It’s not obviously hostile. It’s more a frustrating dis/ease. I felt angry too. Artists working from a position of disadvantage and/or who feel (or are) overlooked have made it into a strength; they aren’t professional victims and they are not preaching about it. It is a truth and it is in the works—their life, their experience, and their reality, their world, which is also our world, the world that we all live in. As Atticus Finch says to his daughter, Scout, in To Kill a Mockingbird, “First of all,” he says, “if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”4 As an artist the right to offend is sacred.H. R. Hyatt-Johnston is a visual artist; one half of the collaborative duo The Twilight Girls; and a writer, list-maker, collector, and occasional curator. Hyatt-Johnston’s diverse employment background in hospitals, environmental organizations, and contemporary art spaces has resulted in a variety of roles, including general manager, registered nurse, midwife, and preparator. She has an avid interest in lighthouses, national parks, wildlife, and scrambling up mountains.

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 group extended to Balladonia in Western Australia, while the eastern group extended along the Murray River to Euston in New South Wales. The Queensland population of northern hairy-nosed wombats (Lasiorhinus krefftii) was geographically large but highly patchy, and there was an abundant population in the New South Wales Riverina. Both species experienced a population decline between 1870 and 1920, with the main influences thought to be competition from rabbits and control actions by landholders. Our findings suggest that the ongoing control of rabbits via methods that do not harm wombats is critical for wombat conservation today. We also suggest that hairy-nosed wombats may be sensitive to climate change, and recommend more research on this topic.

At the time of European settlement in Australia in 1788, Magpie Geese (Anseranas semipalmata) were abundant, as they remain today, across northern Australia but were also common on swamps and on coastal and inland river floodplains in south-eastern Australia. However, by the early 1900s Magpie Geese had suffered a serious contraction of range from the south-east. In this study, we review all available records of the Magpie Goose and compile a list of processes potentially causing their decline. Historical changes in distribution are then compared with time frames of threatening processes to identify processes most likely to have driven the observed changes. The results suggest that the decline was primarily from loss of wetland habitat and hunting, although lesser threats such as poisoning, predation by Red Foxes (Vulpes vulpes) and severe drought may have increased the rate of decline. Since protection of the species from hunting in the 1930s in eastern and southern states and successful reintroductions in Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia, the species has returned to parts of its former range. However, populations are unlikely to return to their former numbers in the south-east as management of water resources has greatly reduced areas of breeding habitat and drought refuges. We suggest a program of management for southern populations of the Magpie Goose that includes long-term monitoring, engagement of landholders, identification and protection of existing wetlands, creation of new habitat, and reduction of disturbance from humans, introduced pests and livestock.

Is there a distinctive Australian criminology? Was there a criminology before the discipline? Was the formation of the discipline in Australia shaped by the historical contexts of colonial settlement and its aftermath? And how was the international development of the discipline during the middle decades of the twentieth century reflected in the emergence of Australian institutions of criminology, and academic and governmental departments at that time? This article examines these questions as a contribution to a richer historical understanding of the factors that prefigured the late twentieth century acceleration of the discipline in Australia. In particular, it approaches this history through the voices of those who shaped its early concerns and activities. It is suggested that some outstanding features of Australian historical experience from the time of European settlement – above all its penal colony origins and its dispossession of Indigenous peoples – struggled to make an impact on the intellectual shape of the discipline during its formative years. On the other hand, the institutional forms and intellectual concerns traced here demonstrate the importance of trans-national contexts in shaping a discipline from its early days.

Fusarium crown rot (FCR) caused by the fungus Fusarium pseudograminearum (Fp) is an important disease of wheat that reduces yield and grain quality in many countries, including Australia. In this study, we investigated mating type idiomorph composition, putative chemotype and population genotypic structure of 98 Fp isolates from Western Australia (WA) and the eastern Australian states of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. Our results revealed the expected 1:1 mating type ratio for isolates from the eastern states while there was significant variation to a 1:1 mating type composition with isolates from WA. A chemotype-specific PCR assay indicated that all Fp isolates from eastern states and WA segregated for the 3-ADON trichothecene chemotype. Genetic diversity assessed using 21 cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence markers revealed a high level of genotypic variation within and between Fp populations from eastern Australian states and WA. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) showed significant difference between populations from eastern states and WA. The genetic diversity measured by Shannon index ranged from 0.95 to 2.30 with the lowest and highest values detected in Hart and Rowena populations, respectively in the eastern states. Index of association analysis showed no significant linkage of markers among isolates within 60% of the populations, suggesting that sexual reproduction may be occurring in the pathogen from those locations. These results improve understanding of Fp population dynamics across Australia and highlight the importance of monitoring for shifts in the population which could have implications for disease management.

It is probable, however, that Spanish and Portuguese explorers very early brought oranges from the Mediterranean, for at the time of the first permanent settlement in Florida, the orange was already established and practically growing wild. It has been suggested that seeds might have been scattered by Indians who obtained the fruit from the trees planted by these early explorers. Orange trees thrive in this humid subtropical type of climate and their adaptability to a variety of soils soon led to the development of commercial citrus production in many parts of the state. During the early period of citrus production, oranges were the only fruit of importance. There was a large number of varieties and little attention

IntroductionChildren who experience maltreatment have worse health and development outcomes than other children. Early prevention relies on opportunities to respond to system contacts that reliably indicate the population burden of children’s future developmental risk. Objectives and ApproachWe quantified the population burden of developmental vulnerability at age five by the type, timing, and frequency of child protection contacts before school, among children in two Australian states. We used linked whole-population births, child protection and Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) data (2009-2018 cycles) in New South Wales (NSW) and South Australia (SA). Results56,650/398,702 (14%) NSW and 12,617/80,731 (16%) SA children had ≥1 child protection contacts before school. The risk of developmental vulnerability on ≥1 domains was lowest in the no child protection group (NSW, 17-18%; SA, 19%), with higher risks in the child protection report (NSW, 28-29%; SA, 32-35%) through to the OOHC (NSW, 35-38%; SA, 39-50%) groups, with a similar pattern for the risk of medically diagnosed conditions. Children with only one child protection report before school had a higher developmental risk than the no child protection group (NSW, 34% versus 21%; SA, 42% versus 24%). Conclusions/ImplicationsEven a single child protection report in the first 2000 days of children’s lives was a robust indicator of developmental risk at age five, with higher developmental risks among children with more serious child protection contacts before school. Child protection reports represent an under-utilised asset to inform early universal and targeted support from health, human and early education services.

This study reports on the effect of oversowing perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) into a degraded perennial ryegrass and white clover (Trifolium repens L.) pasture to extend its productive life using various intensities of seedbed preparation. Sites in New South Wales (NSW), Western Australia (WA), South Australia (SA) and Tasmania (Tas.) were chosen by a local group of farmers as being degraded and in need of renovation. Control (nil renovation) and medium (mulch and graze, spray with glyphosphate and sow) renovation treatments were common to all sites whereas minimum (mulch and graze, and sow) and full seedbed (graze and spray with glyphosphate and then full seedbed preparation) renovation were imposed only at some sites. Plots varied in area from 0.14 to 0.50 ha, and were renovated then sown in March or April 2000 and subsequently grazed by dairy cows. Pasture utilisation was estimated from pre- and post-grazing pasture mass assessed by a rising plate pasture meter. Utilised herbage mass of the renovated treatments was significantly higher than control plots in period 1 (planting to August) and 2 (first spring) at the NSW site only. There was no difference among treatments in period 3 (first summer) at any site, and only at the WA and NSW sites in period 4 (March to July 2001) was there a response to renovation. As a result, renovation at the NSW site only significantly increased ryegrass utilisation over the whole experimental period. Ryegrass plant density was higher at the NSW, WA (excluding minimum renovation) and Tas. (excluding full renovation) sites 6 months after renovation but this was only sustained for 12 months for the minimum and medium treatments at the NSW and Tas. sites, respectively, presumably due to reduced competition from naturalised C4 summer grasses [kikuyu (Pennisetum clandestinum) and paspalum (Paspalum dilatatum)] in NSW. At the NSW, WA and SA sites, the original ryegrass plant density was low (<35 plants/m2) compared with the Tas. site where density was around 185/m2. The response to renovating a degraded perennial ryegrass pasture varied between sites in Australia. Positive responses were generally small and were most consistent where renovation removed competing C4 summer grasses.

To understand the overwhelming species richness in soil the focus of attention has traditionally been on local soil conditions, such as physical and chemical characteristics. Regional factors like landscape history have been largely ignored. The aim of our study was to assess the importance of geological site age and local site conditions on oribatid mite species richness in undisturbed forest soils. We wanted to evaluate the processes underlying spatial changes in oribatid species richness at the regional level. We selected 41 sites across the Netherlands with different forest types, located on soils with varying levels of humidity and nutrient richness. The selected sites formed a clear spatiotemporal gradient in geological site age, ranging from Holocene sites along the west coast and rivers towards Pleistocene sites in the east of the country. Five samples were collected at each site. Oribatid mites were counted and identified to the species level. In total 145 oribatid mite species were recorded. We observed that oribatid mite species richness across sites was positively affected by site age. Soil nutrient status, water availability, soil type, or forest vegetation type had rather a local modulating effect on soil mite diversity. The increase in species diversity with geological site age was mainly due to an increase in sexually-reproducing species, with an apparent high competitive ability, but lower reproduction rate. Our results suggest that spatial patterns of soil animal community diversity and composition can be significantly determined by geologic age at the regional level.

The Australian Great Artesian Basin (GAB) supports a unique and diverse range of ecologically significant groundwater-fed wetland ecosystems termed GAB springs. The springs are of great national and international importance for their ecological, scientific and economic values, and are culturally significant to indigenous Australians. The ecological sustainability of the springs has become uncertain in recent times due to increased mining operations and associated groundwater extractions from the GAB. The impacts of existing water extractions from the time of European settlement, pastoral activities and more recently mining are largely unknown. This situation is compounded by the likelihood of future increasing demand of water extractions for mining operations. The GAB springs are spatially disparate ecosystems located within the arid interior of South Australia, akin to islands in their ecological setting. The springs exhibit a diverse range of geomorphology, hydrogeology, surface expressions and vegetation community composition over a wide range of spatial scales. A suite of remote sensing technologies were used to capture the range of scales of the spring wetlands and their surface expressions. This multi-sensor approach enabled definition of the spatial and temporal responses of dominant plant species, communities and entire wetlands. To validate the suite of satellite and airborne imagery several comprehensive field campaigns were conducted, capturing the variation in spring vegetation communities and surface expressions. This paper provides a review highlighting the sensor synergies that can be drawn from research conducted from the Australian National Water Commission flagship research program, Allocating Water and Maintaining Springs in the Great Artesian Basin, which has developed new spatial and temporal tools for monitoring indicators of GAB spring response to water allocations and land use (Lewis et al., 2013). The main objectives of this study included: mapping the location and elevation of western GAB springs using high-precision DGPS; development of protocols for ground-based image validation data; develop techniques for detection and monitoring of the surface characteristics of spring-fed wetlands and surrounding environments using fine spatial and spectral resolution imagery; define the short and long-term temporal dynamics of the springs of indicative vegetation types and entire wetlands; use these remote sensing techniques to provide objective and quantitative information about the spring environments and ecological processes. The sensors and image analyses employed to address these objectives included: MODIS NDVI time series (annual and seasonal traces of entire wetlands and dominant vegetation types); very high resolution multispectral satellite (detailed delineation of wetland extents using NDVI thresholds) and airborne hyperspectral imagery (detailed discrimination of spring plant communities and surrounding substrate using spectral matching algorithms); supported by concurrent colour digital aerial photography and collection of near-concurrent in-situ ecological and spectral data for image calibration and validation purposes. The main focus of this review paper is to draw synergies from the image analyses and research findings that can uniquely be provided using this suite of image data in combination, over differing temporal and spatial scales, to provide new understanding of the drivers and ecological processes underpinning the springs. The multi-sensor approach revealed for the first time the spatial and temporal responses of these unique ecosystems to changing climatic conditions, land use change and groundwater extractions. Our results reveal that long-term variation is an inherent signature of the wetlands, with distinct phenological responses for differing vegetation species being driven by seasonal temperature and rainfall. In addition the springs were found to change over short time periods (2-3 years) in response to rainfall and land use change, expressed as changing trajectories of outflow channels and inter-connectivity between springs. This research provides a baseline definition of the long-term natural variation within these groundwater-fed ecosystems as well as their short-term responses to land use changes and water extractions. These outcomes provide an ideal platform for developing models to predict responses of these ecosystems to present local anthropogenic changes in the region and to global climate change.