The Threatened Species Index – the case for long term data in managing Australia’s biodiversity

Event Details

Date:

Friday, 16 September 2022

Time:

11:30 am - 12:00 pm

Room:

GCI (20), Ventures Space, St Lucia Campus

URL:

https://www.uq.edu.au/research/event/session/12500

Event category(s):

Full Description:: Presenter: Dr Geoff Heard

The release of the 2021 State of the Environment report in July 2022 highlighted the crucial nature of long-term monitoring data for tracking biodiversity trends and assessing the efficacy of conservation policy, actions and investments. In this talk, I will introduce Australia’s Threatened Species Index (TSX), run by the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network at the University of Queensland. The TSX fills a key gap in Australia’s biodiversity monitoring, by collating threatened species survey data from across the continent and analysing these data to estimate trends in threatened species abundance. Since its inception in 2016, the TSX has gathered monitoring data for over 200 species, including over 19,000 time-series of species abundance and over 220,000 individual surveys. The TSX is now a crucial component of our national environmental infrastructure, being used by the Australian Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water for its corporate reporting and — for the first time in 2021 — for reporting on threatened species trends in the State of the Environment report. These trends will be presented, and progress towards the 2022 release of the index described. The talk will close with further innovations that are currently being pursued by the TSX team, including a web-based portal that will allow conservation managers to assess threatened species trends at local and regional scales.