Preview of the July-September Australian Geographic

One of the magazines I really enjoy reading in Australia is the excellent Australian Geographic.  The magazine is published quarterly and really is a must read for people with a deep interesting in the land, people, and unique environment of Australia.

The magazine”s lead story this quarter concerns life on the flood plains in Australia’s Outback:

IT’S WONDROUS ENOUGH seeing water, kilometres of it in all directions, near the middle of Australia. But the spectacular explosion of life these rivers trigger when they flow is truly awe-inspiring. Biological limits out here are set by the length of the Dry, and the erratic rising and falling of rivers has unquestionably influenced inland Australia’s ecological rhythms for millennia. When the rivers are down, life is often forced to eke out a cryptic, waterless existence. But when the big flows come, plants and animals respond at a rapid pace and on a massive scale.

Birds suddenly appear en masse: hundreds of thousands of waterbirds – some species stopping briefly en route to distant shores, some out west for a feed and many others that aggregate in huge breeding colonies of 10,000 or more pairs. No-one is quite sure how the birds know when and where Australia’s inland river systems are flowing. One theory is they can sense the low-pressure systems associated with rainfall events that bring floods. Another is they visually navigate by the water flows as if they were riverine highways. [Australian Geographic]

There is also a great article in the issue about Mt. Warning in New South Wales that looks like quite a beautiful place judging by the below picture:

N THE COOL morning mist the forest has a luscious feel. Every fern and vine is glistening. Swathed in a frizzy moss and draped with hoary beards of lichen, the Antarctic beech possess an ageless air. It feels as if a hobbit could bob up at any moment from among the wild scrum of roots at our feet. “In the rainforest it’s all about the light,” John says. “These blokes have developed a coppicing strategy for holding their ground and grabbing a share of sunlight. See here: the original tree has gone, but new growth sprouts from the surrounding roots.” We peer into a ring of trunks forming a ragged circle almost 6 m in diameter.

John has been tracking the secrets of these forests for 35 years. Climate change, however, presents an altogether different quarry. “There’s a big experiment running and we haven’t a clue where it’s going,” he says. “It’s frightening in terms of potential extinctions and biodiversity.” Despite such fears, it’s possible the Antarctic beech might stick around. Having persisted through millions of years of ice ages, cyclones, droughts and fires, this species knows a thing or two about survival. “The beech are catastrophic regenerators,” John says. “In the right conditions, like after a huge knock-down storm, you can get a mass of new seedlings. Old stagers like this one might just sit here and bide their time. They operate on such a different time scale.”  [Australian Geographic]

This article about a scientific expedition into the Simpson Desert was especially interesting considering the amount of biodiversity the researchers were able to find in this remote desert:

VERY FEW scientific expeditions have ventured into the north-western region of the Simpson Desert – certainly none of this size and calibre. The first expedition of note was mounted in 1939 by scientist and central-desert aficionado Cecil Thomas Madigan, who 10 years earlier had named the Simpson Desert after Alfred Allen Simpson, president of the SA branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia.

Madigan travelled with 19 camels and eight men, only two of whom were scientists. In contrast, we have 16 scientists, a dozen paying volunteers, a small but formidably efficient expedition crew led by AG Society administrator Sandy Richardson and 23 sturdy and well-equipped 4WDs. We’ve established base camp at Batton Hill, 320 km east of Alice Springs on the northern edge of the 17,643 sq. km Atnetye Aboriginal Land Trust. From here, we’ll travel to and from two satellite camps – one on the edge of Ngarra Ngarra Swamp, 100 km south along the Hay River, and the other at Mt Tietkens, 15 km to the south-east. If there’s a plant, animal, invertebrate or fungus within cooee of our three camps, we’re bound to find it – or at least traces of it.

There’s something very satisfying about the knowledge that in this little-known corner of the Simpson, almost every scientist’s project is the first of its kind. As bat zoologist David Gee says: “In a sense, anything we find here is a bonus.”  [Australian Geographic]

There is plenty more to read in the magazine such as the effects of bushfires on Australian communities, the harvesting of food in various areas in Australia, and even a little arachnophobia along with a host of other great articles worth checking out.