1. Rocky environments host rich levels of biodiversity and provide vital habitat for specialised organisms, range-restricted species and a broad range of ectotherms adapted to saxicoline environments.2. In Australia, rock habitat is being destroyed during soil amelioration practices associated with agricultural intensification. Advances in rock crushing technology, developed to expand or increase crop yields and efficiency, pose an undocumented threat to global biodiversity, especially reptiles dependent on non-renewable rock habitat in agricultural landscapes. Rock removal is a legislated key threatening process in parts of Australia and will accelerate biodiversity loss if not mitigated.3. We estimated reptile species' range overlap with dryland cropping and modified pastoral regions within the Australian wheat-sheep zone to assess the potential impacts of rock crushing practices. We examined species-and family-richness within the impact zone and across bioregions within the impact zone, to identify areas where rock removal has the greatest potential to impact terrestrial and fossorial squamates. 4. Our analysis revealed that 159 potentially impacted reptile species occur within the study area, representing 16% of Australian terrestrial squamates. Fourteen of these species, including six threatened species, have more than 50% range overlap with areas of intensive agriculture, and include several endangered pygopodids, scincids and agamids. Bioregions rich in rock and burrow-dwelling reptiles include the Brigalow BeltSouth,

Water resources are under growing pressures globally, and better basin planning is crucial to alleviate current and future water scarcity issues. Communicating the complex interconnections and needs of natural and human systems is a significant research challenge. With advances in cyberinfrastructure allowing for new innovative approaches to basin planning, this same technology can also facilitate better stakeholder engagement. The potential benefits of using digital basin planning platforms for stakeholder engagement are immense; yet, there is limited guidance on how to best use these platforms for more effective stakeholder engagement in water-related issues and projects. We detail our digital platform, Basin Futures, and highlight the potential uses for stakeholder engagement through an integrative framework across different assessment levels. Basin Futures is a web application that is an entry-level modelling tool that aims to support rapid and exploratory basin planning globally. As a cloud-based tool, it brings together high-performance computing and large-scale global datasets to make data analysis accessible and efficient. We explore the potential use of the tool through three case studies exploring agricultural development, transboundary water-sharing agreements and allocating water for environmental flows.

Wetlands are one of the most threatened ecosystems on earth. Globally, there is growing demand to develop infrastructure to harvest water resources to support agriculture, threatening the ecological integrity of associated wetland ecosystems. We investigated the potential ecological impacts on floodplain wetland connectivity in northern Australia in response to changes in flow regime due to dam construction and climate change. Results for this study indicate that a drier climate and/or dam construction in catchments have the potential to reduce the effective size of the floodplain and reduce wetland connectivity. A drier climate will reduce rainfall and subsequent catchment run‐off, resulting in a decrease in the magnitude of riverine flows. In contrast, dams in the upper catchment will reduce the magnitude of flows downstream. The reduction in flows under both dam development and a drier climate will result in reduced extent and duration of floodplain inundation and decreased wetland connectivity. As a result, we anticipate that this loss of connectivity will reduce the capacity for nutrients, carbon and primary production to be flushed into the river channel, as well as reduce the ability for biota such as fish and turtles to move between in‐channel and off‐channel habitats.

Context Understanding what characteristics influence retreat-site selection by fauna is critical for both habitat management and species conservation. Despite the documented ecological values of surface rocks, there is limited knowledge of the attributes of surface rock that contribute to their use in agricultural landscapes or during winter months when reptiles are brumating, activity patterns are reduced, and sheltering individuals are most vulnerable to disturbance. Objectives We surveyed reptiles sheltering beneath surface rocks in grazing farms in south-eastern Australia to address two questions: (i) What landscape factors influence the occurrence of reptiles over austral winter? (ii) What physical and thermal factors influence retreat-site selection? Methods We surveyed 14 sites, with three plots per site, stratified across a gradient of canopy cover. We measured landscape attributes of surveyed sites and thermal and physical characteristics of individual surface rocks to quantify relationships between the occurrence of reptiles in the landscape and the properties of retreats selected. Results We found that relatively small patches of surface rock can support high reptile numbers, with density estimates up to of 208 individuals per hectare. Reptile abundance was positively associated with increased elevation and limited canopy cover. Reptiles selected smaller rocks with high surface area to volume ratio, were minimally embedded in the soil, and rocks supporting few invertebrates. Conclusions Conserving cryptozoic reptiles in agricultural landscapes can be enhanced through the appropriate management and retention of surface rock. We discuss implications for reptile conservation and surface rock management in agricultural landscapes.

No abstract