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Cotton Landcare Tech-Innovations 2021
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The Cotton Landcare Tech-Innovations 2021 project is being led by the Cotton Research Development Corporation (CRDC). It is a three-year collaborative project between CRDC, the University of New England (UNE) and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), with funding from the Australian Government’s National Landcare Program’s Smart Farming Partnerships initiative.
The $1.3 million project finishes in 2021 and will develop cutting edge technologies to help the Australian cotton industry better manage and report on on-farm biodiversity. The Cotton Landcare Tech-Innovations 2021 project is researching and developing two new technologies and improving best practice guidelines for managing biodiversity on farms.
Innovation for cotton landscape revegetation (drones and tractors) Dr Rhiannon Smith UNE
The UNE component, led by Dr Rhiannon Smith in collaboration with ecosystem restoration experts, UK-based BioCarbon Engineering, Stringybark Ecological, Local Land Services and NSW Landcare, are investigating new and improved cost-effective direct seeding technologies for revegetation on cotton farms, using drones and tractors.
Direct seeding technologies have been used successfully in Australia as a cost-effective alternative to planting tubestock. But trials of the technology using tractors have had mixed success on vertosol soils (heavy cracking clay) in semi-arid floodplain regions, where many cotton farms are situated.
Vertosols crack when dry and can become quite hard, making the establishment of native plants difficult, whether planting fine native seed or tubestock. On floodplains, natural revegetation events generally occur following floods or periods of prolonged or recurring rainfall events when the soil is saturated, allowing the seed to germinate and get established.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to get machinery on these soils when saturated. Emerging technologies like drones will enable UNE to replicate natural conditions, increasing the likelihood of the successful establishment of native vegetation. Over the next three years, UNE will work alongside BioCarbon Engineering trialling the drone technology they built and fine-tuning it for identified unique native species and soils.
BioCarbon Engineering has developed a large drone that has a 15 kg payload and a modified air rifle to shoot seeds, encapsulated in a watersoluble ‘pod’, into the ground at 40 metres per second, while hovering two metres above the ground. The drones can also broadcast seed at a rate of 400 kg per day. The planting drones follow a pre-determined flight path produced by mapping drones and can be controlled by someone sitting in the airconditioned comfort of their ute. Usually a tree planting team would be required to achieve large-scale revegetation. The drones can plant a hectare of trees in under 20 minutes – approximately a quarter of the time needed for tubestock.
The seeds that are ejected by the modified air rifle are no regular seeds either. The watersoluble seed capsules are pumped full of seeds, fertiliser, microbial amendments and anything else that is required to germinate and establish seeds. The seeds are protected in that capsule until there is enough moisture in the soil to break down the capsule and allow the seeds to germinate and establish. UNE is working to prove the concept of the planting methodology in semi-arid vertosol soils on cotton farms.
One of the biggest challenges with direct seeding technologies is sourcing suitable quality seed, particularly during drought conditions when plants are not flowering, pollinators are absent, or seed quality is low due to parent
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tree ill-health. UNE is currently undertaking glasshouse trials investigating different seed coatings to increase direct seeding germination success, concentrating on the more problematic eucalyptus species.
The seed for the trials has been sourced from the Murray and North West Local Lands Service’s from a range of provenances, and tests are underway to determine the quality of different seed lots to inform the selection of high-quality seed lots for future work. The number of seeds per gram, seed weight, viability and germinability tests are crucial to ensuring high rates of germination and seedling vigour. In addition to drought, fragmentation of populations may impact seed quality, particularly if pollinators are absent or specialist pollinators are required to travel vast distances between populations.
Technology for acoustic monitoring on cotton farms Associate Professor Erin Peterson QUT
Associate Professor Erin Peterson and her team from QUT, in collaboration with worldleading researchers in automated acoustic recogniser development and global citizen science from University College London, UK,
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The first step in the project was to identify which bird and microbat species to target for acoustic monitoring in Australian cotton systems. The Australian cotton industry’s biodiversity sustainability target uses an indicator of “medium proportion of bird and/ or insectivorous bat guilds detected on farms (including flagship species).” A guild refers to a group of species that utilise a similar space in ecosystems for food, habitat etc.
To achieve this, a technical workshop was held at QUT in early 2019 with international collaborators, key CRDC researchers, NRM representatives, and extension personnel. The outcome of this workshop was a list of bird and bat species, ranked according to their appropriateness as biological indicators based on: • The benefits they pr ovide to growers; • The ability for cotton management actions to positively impact their presence, activity, or abundance • Their natural spatial and temporal distribution; and, • The complexity and variability in their calls.
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Birds
Dr Rhiannon Smith and her team from UNE have used published literature reporting the interactions between birds and habitat condition variables to classify bird species, recorded during surveys on cotton farms, into guilds relating to species ecology and behaviour, and sensitivity to management. This data will inform habitat management for bird biodiversity on cotton farms. The data was also used to inform the industry’s sustainability indicator for biodiversity (bird guilds on cotton farms) and associated reporting.
The 16 guilds described in the research and details on responses to habitat structural and compositional elements is the subject of a paper currently in preparation. For the purpose of developing the automatic recognisers used in acoustic sensors, these 16 bird guilds were aggregated into a coarser and more manageable six guilds at the workshop.
Bat guilds
Four guilds of insectivorous bats were identified, which were categorised into Narrow, Edge, Gleaners, and Open Space. Because of the nature of bats, it is not possible for most species to fit within a single guild. Instead, bat guilds are defined based on characteristics such as wing shape, echolocation, foraging style, etc. But the species of bat selected from these four guilds for acoustic monitoring are all tree-roosting, and so rely on the presence of trees to be present in a landscape (acknowledging their varied ability to disperse). All are found in the four primary cotton-growing regions of NSW and Queensland, and all but the Open Space bats are reliant on woodlands for foraging. In contrast, Open Space bats are important because of their ability to take pest insect species above agricultural areas.
QUT is now beginning the process of developing automatic recognisers for these species.
Biodiversity management guidelines for cotton Stacey Vogel, CRDC and Julian Wall, 2Rog Consulting
As part of the Cotton Landcare Tech-Innovations 2021 project, CRDC contracted consultants, 2Rog Consulting, to identify priority areas and management actions for biodiversity conservation within the broader cotton-growing regions.
Building on previous CRDC research that developed a spatial inventory of biodiversity assets across the cotton-growing regions of NSW and Queensland, a prioritisation framework was developed and linked to geographic information system (GIS) technology that identifies areas of remnant vegetation in the cotton landscape most suitable for long-term restoration and revegetation projects. The areas of remnant vegetation were prioritised for protection and enhancement on account of their values, including riverine vegetation, threatened ecological communities, landscape connectivity, proximity to established reserves, and proximity to cotton fields.
The project identified 315 threatened and iconic plant and animal species in the cotton landscape of eastern Australia, from the NSW-Victoria border to the Fitzroy Basin in Queensland. The cotton landscape was divided into 36 regions based on local shires, and for each region a profile was established that: • Pr ovides an overview map of the cotton footprint and priority areas for restoration; • Lists key biodiversity assets including vegetation types, wetlands, species, rivers and creek lines, and adjacent public land reserves; and, • Lists a set of r egion-specific management actions that focus on the habitat requirements of the particular assemblage of species represented in that region.
The profiles are designed to increase the knowledge base about biodiversity assets in cotton-growing regions, and to stimulate further action and provide a guide of where and how to ensure that remaining bushland is retained, enhanced and augmented for the benefit of all native plant and animal species and for a healthy, functioning landscape. CottonInfo is currently developing the guidelines into an online format which will be available to growers via myBMP and the CottonInfo website.
