Managing arid zone natural resources in Australia for spatial and temporal variability – an approach from first principles

Mark Stafford Smith; Ryan R. J. McAllister

doi:10.1071/RJ07052

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Previous Next Contents Vol 30(1)

Managing arid zone natural resources in Australia for spatial and temporal variability – an approach from first principles

Mark Stafford Smith ^A ^C and Ryan R. J. McAllister ^B

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, PO Box 284, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.

^B CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, 306 Carmody Road, St Lucia, Qld 4067, Australia.

^C Corresponding author. Email: mark.staffordsmith@csiro.au

The Rangeland Journal 30(1) 15-27 https://doi.org/10.1071/RJ07052
Submitted: 13 July 2007 Accepted: 6 September 2007 Published: 1 April 2008

Abstract

Outback Australia is characterised by variability in its resource drivers, particularly and most fundamentally, rainfall. Its biota has adapted to cope with this variability. The key strategies taken by desert organisms (and their weaknesses) help to identify the likely impacts of natural resource management by pastoralists and others, and potential remedies for these impacts. The key strategies can be summarised as five individual species’ responses (ephemerals, in-situ persistents, refuging persistents, nomads and exploiters), plus four key emergent modes of organisation involving multiple species that contribute to species diversity (facilitation, self-organising communities, asynchronous and micro-allopatric co-existence). A key feature of the difference between the strategies is the form of a reserve, whether roots and social networks for Persistents, or propagules or movement networks for Ephemerals and Nomads. With temporally and spatially varying drivers of soil moisture inputs, many of these strategies and their variants can co-exist.

While these basic strategies are well known, a systematic analysis from first principles helps to generalise our understanding of likely impacts of management, if this changes the pattern of variability or interrupts the process of allocation to reserves. Nine resulting ‘weak points’ are identified in the system, and the implications of these are discussed for natural resource management and policy aimed at production or conservation locally, or the regional integration of the two.

Additional keywords: biodiversity management, deserts, drylands, grazing management, life-history strategy, rangelands.

Acknowledgements

The work reported in this publication was supported by Land and Water Australia, CSIRO, and funding from the Australian Government Cooperative Research Centres Programme through the Desert Knowledge CRC (www.desertknowledgecrc.com.au); the views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of Desert Knowledge CRC or its Participants. We are grateful for the review comments of Leigh Hunt, Steve Morton and Julian Reid. This is Publication No. 2 in the development of a Science of Desert Living.

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Managing arid zone natural resources in Australia for spatial and temporal variability – an approach from first principles

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