Rebecca Greening
Rebecca is a PhD Candidate who is digging into the effects of livestock on soil ecological processes in Australia's arid rangelands. Her project utilises the TGB Osborn (Koonamore) Vegetation Reserve, a unique site that has been free from livestock for 100 years, as an ecological baseline to compare with neighbouring grazed land in South Australia's arid rangelands.
Rebecca is passionate about revitalising interest in this under-recognised site and demonstrating how grazing-exclusion reserves have immense value for understanding arid ecosystem function, with benefits for both conservation and pastoral land management.
Title of presentation: A Century Without Livestock at Koonamore: Vegetation Recovery and the Soil Beneath Arid Zone Plants
Rebecca’s presentation will first explore the history of the Koonamore Reserve and what 100 years of vegetation surveys have revealed about key arid zone species such as mulga (Acacia aneura) and pearl bluebush (Maireana sedifolia). These long-term observations highlight the role of extreme rainfall events and rabbit control in plant recruitment, and show that even a century of monitoring represents just a brief snapshot of arid rangeland vegetation dynamics.
She will then introduce her PhD research on “fertile islands”—patches of enriched soil that form beneath perennial plants in the arid zone—which can boost plant growth by up to 60%. Rebecca will discuss how plant species and canopy structure influence fertile island formation and how this knowledge can guide the collection of soil to use at home to promote plant vigour. Her work also examines the contribution of microbes and nutrients within these fertile islands to plant growth, and evaluates which has the greater influence in arid ecosystems.
Abstracts this author is presenting: