The lab has recently been awarded a grant from the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility to investigate how we can help Australia’s threatened species adapt to climate change. Several decades of research has shown that many species are likely to go extinct because of climate change, but which species these will be, and what we can do to prevent these extinction remain uncertain. We believe that it is crucial to use high quality science to help us make choices about which species we should protect, and whether we should be protecting or restoring habitat for some species that will be affected by climate change.

In this project, we will build predictions about how species and habitats will move in response to climate change over the next century. Crucially, we will then work out how much it will cost to protect existing habitat for these species, and to restore new habitat where this would help the species survive. We will take into account uncertainty about the costs, benefits and feasibility of these conservation activities, to provide clear advice where, when and how to act to help our nation’s biodiversity adapt to climate change.

The postdoctoral researcher working on this project is Dr Ramona Maggini, and UQ honours student Jasmine Lee has been awarded a scholarship through WWF-Australia to work on predicting climate vulnerability for Australia’s threatened species.