Innovative roots ripping process to protect Australia's arid woodlands
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2024
- Nanya Research Station is a prime example of why arid ecosystems are so important to Australia's environment. These barren-looking places are home to some of the most biodiverse plants and animals, and it's where Federation University Australia's Prof. Martin Westbrooke has been bringing students and conducting conservation research since the late 80s.
Hear about the latest innovations to regenerate Alectryon oleifolius (commonly known as rosewood or cattle bush), widely found in the area pre-dating European settlement of the once farmland.
Australia has a lot of brilliant scientists who often get way less respect and funding than they deserve. As an agriculture educator for more than 30 years I've taken every opportunity to have students see what is done on research stations here in Qld, and have never failed to be impressed at the breadth and depth of knowledge and understanding of the ecosystems we use to provide our food.
This is great work, and so important. Well done Prof Westbrooke and team!
We need to lift the research and development budget of a whole lot of projects in Australia.
More importantly, we need to train people up and preserve the knowledge we already have and pay people enough to it stays here...
I'm a qualified carpenter and I want to get into agriculture. It really is the backbone of society
Even more pleasing is the Gov support/funding, given the Wests current trend towards science denial. Kudos.
@@James-mb6jt : It's a real shame that these so called Ag research projects are little more than jobs for mates within the uni's. Most are a total waste.
@@Woodbug-b7t : Uni's denying science has indeed become a huge problem. The only genuine research being carried out is by farmers.
Nice to see a program that helps the Australian bush!
The amount of feral goats out that way is crazy. I drove out that way in 2020 driving back to SA from Qld.
It's a massive problem. Increases desertification, reduces moisture in the soil, top-soil loss during inevitable, natural dry spells. Needs considerable intervention.
@@McWhatevs : I suggest you read about the goats before commenting further.
As in the progress in Africa, where tree planting has failed, it’s found that ‘the trees are in the ground’. - very interesting & vital work👏👏👏👏👏
Great work Martin Westbrooke and team.
I live in the Midwest in America we have deep prairie loam we also get about meter of moisture a year such a stark contrast to what Australia has , good to see you are working with what you have.
After rabbit netting the farm we had seedling bullock bush come up at Mannum, which is very marginal country. So the issue isn't likely that they're hard to grow but that they don't deal well with grazing pressure.
Also a side note in areas where tracks are ripped for rehabilitation after mineral exploration, these can become lined with sucker and seedling growth. Many native plants do well in disturbed soils and some thrive in niche environments such as roadsides, Sturt Desert Peas for example.
I agree with you about soil disturbance, everywhere you look now in WA there are yellow road side markers indicating "rear & endangered" plant species. Inside of these markers no soil disturbance is permitted. A grader operator that worked for the Govt. Dept. I was with highlighted the increased appearance and growth of many of the endangered species were in the windrows from previous grading operations. This wasn't for all endangered species but just highlights how Australian native species can be unique in their regeneration requirements.
Such clever little sausages at that university! keep up the great work and thanks
This is amazing. Great to see this work being carried out.
Fantastic work you're doing.
Amazing results indeed well done
How brilliant. Our native species are so interesting and unique. It’s fantastic that such research is taking place.
I drove extensively in the outback and its vastness gives you a real spiritual feeling. it is great to see researchers doing this work to improve the landscape for the whole ecology of this system.
Wow what a great isea this is to be able to simply loosen the soil this way to alow such an iconic shrub or tree to geminate like this. Yes as always it is out arrid country areas that will always suffer regardless of how clever thses great Sveintists are. Thank you for the most informtive infprmation any thing to help this Country be saved arrid or not. Aussie Bob.
Loosen the soils containing the tree roots (up to 30 metres from the "parent" tree)
You can rip holes all over the desert but unless the tree's roots are chopped up promoting suckering .....that would otherwise be a waste of time......
Fascinating to consider how European arrival and its accompanying "terraforming" via cattle raising affected these unique trees. Maybe those seeds are sort of designed to sprout only in high rainfall conditions, which without cattle wasn't a big issue.
The cattle aren't really the problem, or at least they are a pretty minor part of it. The bigger issue is the introduction of more permanent water sources allowed kangaroo numbers to explode along with feral goats, rabbits and Camels(depending on the area and the impact of different species has changed over the years).
@@Jake12220absolutely correct. High kangaroo populations along side with the ever prolific feral goat are the reason that sapling trees and perennial grass species don’t get a chance to get a start before they’re chewed down.
@@Jake12220 Interesting, thanks
@@Jake12220 great point, easily missed.
I love Aussie, Rob Miller from the McKenzie Country, South Island, New Zealand….My Grand dad was a Tasmanian, he was born in 1896.
1000 kms / 13 hrs drive west of Sydney.
400 kms north east of Adelaide.
150 kms north west of Mildura.
Dendrochronology tells us we had a 15 year long drought in the last 500 years. What if the the clump of Rosewoods is not a clump of individual trees but all the one tree connected by the one root system?
Do you think a root system morphology like this would be a great addaption to droughts longer than a decade?
Have noticed the same thing when trenched a water pipe line past a Rosewood clump.
Also noticed rabbit warren ripping 20 years ago, year 4 of Milennium Drought, too close to Rosewood clump, severely reduced the growth existing old-growth Rosewoods.
Hope this helps.
I guess it is the lesser of 2 evils. Don’t do anything and the rabbits and goats eat every seedling till they go extinct or use a ripper to stimulate new vegetive growth. Not an easy solution to the problem but worth experimenting in my opinion.
That's a great question about the rosewood being the same tree and would be very interested to know the answer.
I was wondering if root cuttings are more successful than seed, however there is still the problem of lack of genetic diversity.
Curious to know more about the research.
Well done team at Federation University.
Awesome video guys. Good to see some works in Aus
Graft branches to desert figs. Don't remove all the fig branches. The water the fig takes up will speed up growth.
When I was a little one like 5-6 grandad and dad used to hook up a chain between the bulldozers and clear our land. Its arid as hell now... used to flood to like a foot deep in the wet season.
Great idea at work. But what brought up this method of the actual working of this propagation. If the roots are 50cm down then were there animals that capably exposed roots in these areas in the past or insects. What inspired this tree to respond in this way? Camelias and some others also do this when the root is exposed to wind sun and rain. But the dryness out west root depth would possibly have caused these trees to forget about shooting from the roots.
I think from the other content in this video, it is more likely that they have been shooting from the roots, but the new small plants are eaten down by goats and kangaroo before they get a chance to grow enough to develop their own root system and get above the grazing animals. All these ecosystems were well balanced and sustainable before us white fellas came along and broke things. Now it's up to us to eat humble pie (otherwise known as epistemic humility) and work with the custodians of country as well as using modern science to try to fix things.
Wombats were in the Riverina where Rosewoods still grow.
@@kevinkelly7078 Ahh. Good thanks. So there is a natural reason for the root shooting happening as a self preservation by the tree. It was not a case of strange thoughts by scientists round a campfire with a couple of bottles of gin. Though that process seems to have had good results from time to time.
So the roots spread a long way to get moisture to survive and you create greater drain on that limited resource. It will be interesting to see if it works long term
Absolutely awesome that we have people like Prof. Martin and others like him rejuvenating our bush country. The european method has had a devastating effect on the natural order of what is the most unique natural enviroment and wildlife that have roamed this huge continent for millions and millions of years yet it took the introduction of foreign inteference it has taken just over a few hundred years to decimate huge areas of important enviromental Australian amazing resilient bushland of unique fauna not found anywhere else on the planet. Good stuff Dr Martin.
Rubbish.
@@buildmotosykletist1987 Chill tuffin puff! If u say ur rubbish ur in a bad way. Get better soon.
@@buildmotosykletist1987 What r ya whinging bout? U got 1 upside down thumbs up psyclistsumthin1987.
Love your work!
This is brilliant! Well done!! I wonder if it might apply to other similar areas and some of the trees that grow there.
Yes also applies to African Boxthorn.
Fantastic practical research!
Hope you can turn it into economic benefit.
All the best, fron an Argie Agronomist
Excellent work ❤
Great work team
fantastic
is the plan to 'harvest' some of the sucker growth and replant them at some point? Or leave well enough alone and be happy about all the new growth on it's own?
Amazing to see a machine of such environmental destruction put to use to help regenerate and repair the environment.
Bulldozers and heavy machinery are fascinating bits of kit. It really goes to show technology itself isn't bad. It's how it's used that matters.
Have you tried different micro bacterias both foreign and native to boost the growth of seeds and seedlings a friend own a native nurserry and had massive problems with lots of rare acacias and gum trees not germinating well or stunting until he used a micro bacterias first he started off with foreign then start getting soil samples from where each would grow then usign that soil to grow out microbacterias and found that alot would grow twice as fast as the microbacteria they have been around for 1000' of years has a symbiosis with the roots and has adapted perfectly to givve the right amount of nutrients and water to seedlings
Nice work guys! You can’t put a price tag on having a healthy bush and environment.
Fascinating ....
This is what I love to see
Great video
Seeds are easy to germinate if using fresh seed. Straight off the tree and into a community tray and Alectryon will come up like grass. Stored seed goes into a physiological dormancy & is highly predated by grubs 😉
Oh gosh, you should surely go the the university and teach them all you know. Now tell us how planting the seedlings with their tiny root systems would survive in the desert soil with no moisture or rain? As opposed to having a thick succulent root already established.
@@einfelder8262 maybe I should. I was calling out the comment that the seed is hard to get germinated, which isn't true. This 'innovative' method has been around for decades. Yes, suckering works well for Alectryon, as well as Casuarina and Acacia carneorum but its also a genetic bottle neck in the long run. And yes, I have established such species from seedlings on nearby post mine rehabilitation with their tiny little root systems champ
Awesome
Fascinating work keep up the research
Awesome stuff. Great work guys!
Great work …..all of it. Well done!
Very interesting. seems like a cost effective revegetation method.
Nope.
Reminds me of the Soilkee renovator.
Hi team, is it possible to transplant the new trees after suckering? or can the roots be broken off the mother plant like a rhizome to sucker ether being replanted direct in a new location or returned to a nursery environment?
Science wins every time !!
To many people the words , bulldozer, chainsaw, rifle and herbicide would be an oxymoron to conservation. This video proves otherwise in the case of bulldozers!. What a great project.
Why use three tynes? it appears good results could occur with the use of one tyne and save some soil disturbance.
You may just have hinted at one of the next hypotheses to be considered. 🙂
@@mortqqq Excellent. I wish you well. I love western NSW but can’t get out there for the rain! I had to cancel my last 2 trips. It must be looking amazing out there at the moment.
Crazy to be filling in dams and drying out the landscape further. The trees are obviously crying out for moisture. Better to keyline rip and capture more moisture, spend a bit more on fencing to keep the roos out, and actually grow some wetland forest that will cool and moisten the entire region. Rather than propping up a tree that isn’t thriving in its natural environment.
Rosewoood is well adapted to where it lives. The root system grows out more than 30metres (100ft) to intercept the very erratic rain fall. Rosewood grows very slowly. This would conserve soil moisture for the dry times. Can we think of a reason why "wetland forest" does not grow on the edge of the desert?
@@kevinkelly7078 absolutely, what a wonderful, resilient plant. I'm just pointing out that this project is about helping them because they are not thriving, due in some part to the lack of water. So, given this is a drying and warming continent, it would be fascinating to do a side-by-side safe to fail trial of earthworks and plantings - yes, even wetland plantings - that would work to increase the hydrological function of the landscape both above and below the ground.
WELL DONE
Sensational
Maybe Alectryon relied on some burrowing animal that isn’t there anymore.
Excellent.
As soon as the tree cover is built up again the amount of moisture loss from sheer evaporative effects will drop and the environment will return to equilibrium.
Exactly!
Interesting that the disturbance is triggering the new tree growth. I wonder if you could use high-intensity animal impact as a tool a la Holistic Management. Hooves would break open the capping, allow moisture to penetrate and potentially trigger growth just like the disturbance with machinery, except the animals would be profitable unlike a depreciating tractor
Australia needs native tree plantations for all species indigenous of the land. The seeds need to be collected and sprouted for everyone to plant all over Australia.
In Western Australia they planted so many seedlings they ran out of stock and had to build new nurseries for the demand. Its starting.
Only plant indigenous to the area though, we have 'native' weed wattles taking over and even hybridising with local wattles in Central Victoria 😢
Yes out of area natives can be a weed as much as exotics can that is true. localized seed collection is a must.
reminds me, in 1972 I deepripped a hop farm, soil had been touched in 500 years, my guess is this red dirt has not been touched inn 5000 years
Well done
Nice good to see.
Hi there really interesting article can the new trees be relocated after a few years to help the spread and genetic diversity
Good news😊
Would be good, to have more array of native trees. If that was possible, in that landscape.
May I suggest we need to look after what grows naturally, where it is already growing. Perhaps we could ask why Rosewoods do not grow where it floods after a big rain? Why do Rosewoods grow on deep sandy-loam soils?
Does this mean that within 30 metres of the parent tree, the greater proportion of the plants in the regeneration sequence, is genetically homogenous?
That's quite interesting, thanks for sharing 👍
This is very interesting, and a promising development.
Do the trees born of suckers have the same longevity and resilience as trees grown from seeds?
My thought is that the DNA of the sucker trees will be the same as the original tree, whilst those that have seeded will combine the DNA of 2 trees.
Plants such as bamboo which sucker are prone to mass die off which gardeners have noted occurs world wide in cases where cloned bamboo have been exported for use in gardens.
In animal cloning the use of ‘older’ DNA has led to the offspring being prone to health issues normally associated with aging at a younger age.
Hence the question, I hope someone can answer. 🙂
Many trees have an inhibitor system where the exising growing tree prevents germination of its own seeds.
In dry times, a plant's most serious competitor for soil moisture is other plants of the same species growing too close.
Say a fierce fire kills the old mature parent tree. Over time the germination inhibitor dissipates and the most resilient seeds germinate when good growing conditions return. This could be an evolutionary strategy to survive multi year droughts vegetatively while providing decades long drought survival via sexual droughts and
...sorry,..via multi parent seed production for genetic diversity and the selection process.
Hope this helps.
Ripping up the archaeology.
Does the research team have any trials that involve the retention of water much like that in the sahara? ua-cam.com/video/WCli0gyNwL0/v-deo.htmlsi=xmd94s8b9MtwNoUs
I wonder if the benefit that the tree roots are getting us because of the trenching that holds more water rather than the damage to the roots?
always good to hear of innovative regeneration techniques . shame about the bloody goats !
Interesting 🇬🇧
Is there a natural process that stimulates growth in a similar way? Or an animal that rips roots as it forages?
How much diesel was burnt between the dozer, crew, transport and accommodation?
Is this project solely focusing on rosewood ? How about using more diverse native species ?
Most native species are not overly difficult to replant or grow. Rosewood is an important but difficult species due to its incredibly slow growth rate. Most of the small looking trees shown in this clip are likely well over 100 years old.
Its slow growth is both a blessing and a curse. Its timber is extremely weather and pest resistant so it doesn't get bothered by termites, but in turn it's also the best fencing timber. It can survive long droughts and heatwaves that few other species can, but that makes it great fodder for any herbivores (domestic, feral or native).
So what makes it great and has allowed it to become an extremely widespread and common species is also what has left it vulnerable.
There is no risk of the species going extinct in the short term, these sorts of studies are aiming to fix a problem before it actually becomes a serious problem in the decades to come.
Cool.
Its basically a tuberous tree evolved for fire resistance from continual Aboriginal burning
Rosewoods have a different growth morphology compared to Mallee which regrows from lignotubers after fire.
Woww😮
nice one
Do the same results happen with single tine ripping or is wide 3 tine needed
Yes but you get 1/3 of the benefit of running the dozer. The dozer is expensive to run.
How do I apply for funding
what would be the natural equivalent wombats digging?
That's an interesting thought - wombats, or similar critter (not sure how common wombats are in that dry country) and eats or chews roots could well have been the cause of suckering in earlier times. Even insect larvae that live on roots. (I shouldn't say it, but you remind me of the unfortunate wording in a biology text many years ago about wombats, that led to Australian men being described as behaving like wombats when dating - the quote in the book was "it eats roots, shoots and leaves".)
Very rude, I apologise.
@@mortqqqeats roots & leaves
There used to be bandicoots and bettongs in that area but cats and foxes killed them off
Aren't the trees you get just clones of the mothertree, with the same biological age, so you stand the risk of the new trees dying off at the same time as the mothertree, and you don't get any new blodlines?
Interesting you need disturbance for them the flourish.
I think you should use massive amounts of animal impact, politically managed. That animal impact and moisture and poo may be more effective them using technology alone. Use organisms alongside of technology...
Thats ok on a research station but if its still palatable and slow growing that means keeping cattle off them until they are mature ....
Finish your sentence
@@MichaelTavares
Sure...after you
Yes, this is why roo proof fencing and destocking for a few years, as an extra long grazing rotation, is gaining popularity, particularly in droughts.
@@kevinkelly7078 I imagine you'd certainly need to and then give it break again over time in the same way or you are back to square one
You have your work cut out for you, coal, iron ore, gold and opal mining have a massive head start.
are the seeds activated by fire like other natives ?
that was usles what you need to do is make a hole for water bank
*hello ❤ guys*
Environmental Vandalism. Whats the long term effects? the effect on the host tree? get rid of your goats.
If there are too many goats and kangaroos maybe they need more dingoes.
Look like a good way to cause more flooding ....
Oh, sure, genius.
@@einfelder8262 oh sure genius !!!!! Deep ripping is bad , take a look around some tree farming areas that have been deep ripped during a heavy or prolonged rain event and tell me what you see cupcake .....
Rosewoods do not grow where the water lies on the surface.
@@kevinkelly7078 so you have no idea what deep ripping does to the ground ....... Typical
so ripping out vegetation saves vegetation??????????????
GOATS are The PROBLEM !That is OBVIOUS, you can do all The Ripping, and walk around with pen and paper, enjoying The Country Air, BUT you KNOW IT'S JUST a Waste of Money and Resources.The Occasional Fire Does Wonders.
"Settlement" is such a cowardly euphemism.
Goats are a huge problem.
Good stuff.
They have been doing this in Africa for years
Yes, ripping on the contour will intercept rain run-off and promote infiltration. Also captures wind blown seeds. Was used to regenerate wind scalds following the 1939 to 1944 drought.
Hope this helps.