Weeds and climate change
Given the current threat posed by weeds to the environment, agriculture and human health there is significant interest in understanding the likely impact of climate change on weed abundance and distributions in Australia.
A recent report highlighted the likely effect of climate change on weeds, and minimising the impact of invasive organisms on biodiversity in future climates is a key objective of the National Biodiversity and Climate Change Action Plan.
To address this problem the Office of Environment and Heritage is working on a collaborative project with Macquarie University, funded by a grant from the Australian Research Council (ARC) through the Linkage scheme.
This project has three aims:
- To model the distribution of significant weed species in NSW and to predict the effects of climate change on their potential distribution.
- To investigate the current and potential invasion success of exotic vines in an endangered ecological community (littoral rainforest) along a latitudinal gradient and relate this to plant functional traits.
- To improve understanding of the impact of elevated temperature and CO2 on competitive interactions between exotic and native plant species, using experimental approaches.
Page last updated: 11 August 2011
