Mobile ecologies complex landscapes
Cultural environmental research to understand and enhance invasive plant management in high amenity rural areas
This project aims to investigate the effects of demographic and land-use changes on invasive plant species distribution and management in rural Australia. Amenity migration –the movement of often affluent or suburban populations to rural areas for lifestyle reasons – is changing rural landscapes and the social and environmental conditions within which invasive plants are found and managed. The project involves social science researchers from the Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research (AUSCCER) and the Institute for Conservation Biology and Environmental Management (ICBEM) based at the University of Wollongong.
Project researchers will investigate the extent to which farm sales and subdivision, landholder diversity, weed and natural resource management organisations and groups, and the character of plants themselves affect invasive plant management. These issues will be explored in study areas on the NSW south coast that encompass a diverse set of land-use types and invasive plant species.
Why?
As rural areas undergo rapid social and environmental change, the new landscapes that are developing contain diverse interests, different social norms, changed cross-boundary relationships, and new patterns of land use. They also experience environmental change as land is taken out of production, forest expands, or weed management priorities change. In areas of where landowners have diverse values and motivations the reasons for managing their property are far from straightforward. We aim to:
- Examine how amenity landowner’s desires to be ‘closer to nature’ translate into engagement with, and management of, their land and invasive plants.
- Compare amenity landowners’ values and practices regarding invasive plants with the values and practices of other landowners such as farmers and official invasive plant policy and managers.
- Determine the extent to which the distribution of selected invasive plants is influenced by demographic and land-use change at regional and local scales.
How are we doing this?
We will use a mix of social and spatial science methods to develop a research project thoroughly grounded in landholder’s experiences of owning and managing their land. We will invite landholders to participate in various research activities, including a short survey, interviews, and property walks and participatory mapping. If landholders will have us we will also do weeding or other work with them. We aim to build up an in-depth picture of the decisions, choices, and actions of landowners with respect to invasive plant management and associated activities such as grazing or environmental restoration. We also aim to interview managers such as noxious weeds officers and natural resource management agency staff.
We will also use remote sensing and other spatial data to map the distribution of selected invasive plants over a large area encompassing a diverse range of landowner types. This data will be combined with the participatory mapping to map the timing and density of individual landholder management effort. By combining these two scales of analysis, we aim to provide insights into where and why people choose to manage invasives and into the effectiveness of this at the property scale and beyond.
Why is it useful?
The significance of this research lies in three key areas:
- It will provide insight into how lifestyle-oriented rural landholders learn about invasive plants, the effectiveness of landholder engagement strategies, and into how landholders make decisions and choices about invasive plant management.
- It builds on the ‘human dimensions’ approach to environmental research, particularly that on the ecology and biology of invasive plants - potentially opening up new conversations about the role of invasive plants and their management by landowners and others in shaping future rural landscapes.
- For regional scale analysis of invasive plant distribution, it employs newly available remote sensing imagery for detailed invasive plant mapping. This offers the potential to directly explore the connections between management decisions, activities, and invasive plant distribution.
Who is funding the project?
This research is being funded by a grant from the Australian Research Council (ARC). The ARC aims to deliver policy and programs that advance Australian research and innovation globally and benefit the community.
Contact
Dr Nicholas Gill
Associate Professor
Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research
University of Wollongong
Tel: (02) 4221 4165
Email: ngill@uow.edu.au
Nicholas Gill is a human geographer with research interests in environmental management, rural cultures, and land use change. His research focuses on rural areas, particularly on cultural and social aspects of land management, land use and environmental change. His recent research has focused on land management by lifestyle rural land owners.