What We Do >> Research Programs >> Natural and Cultural Heritage

The Natural and Cultural Heritage Program

Ecosystem Values & Threats

The rapid and unpredictable changes occurring in natural systems present significant challenges for land and water management and an urgent need for better understanding of ecosystem dynamics. The Institute’s ecosystem-based research aims to assist management agencies to respond quickly and adaptively to environmental signals and to confront the uncertainty of complex systems.

Blue Mountains Tree Frog

Bushfire

Spotted Tailed Quoll

A priority is quantifying how threats to biodiversity impact on ecosystem resilience. Like many protected areas, the GBMWHA faces a range of threats to its immediate and long-term integrity, including fire, climate change, urban development and human disturbance (including tourism), invasive species and disease. Monitoring of the direct and indirect impacts of threats and their synergistic impacts on ecosystem processes and services is needed, with predictions for how these impacts will threaten the GBMWHA over time and space.

Cultural Heritage

Cultural heritage values are significantly under-represented in policy and management decisions for the GBMWHA. Research and better documentation of cultural information, and raising of public awareness of the cultural heritage, particularly Indigenous, are essential to overcome this under-representation and to ensure protection of these values.

Hand stencil

Emu engraving

This research program seeks to address these needs by taking a holistic (i.e. multi-value) approach to cultural heritage, whereby all aspects of a place's significance are documented to inform management decisions. Research by local Aboriginal people into their heritage, and documentation of such, also overcomes some of the barriers to their involvement in the policy processes for the GBMWHA.