[Music playing]
(Anna Richards) Hi, my name's Anna Richards.
I'm a soil and carbon ecologist
with CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences in Darwin.
Our lab is the only CSIRO lab in north-western Australia.
For more than 40 years we've been carrying out
environmental and agricultural research in the Top End.
This beautiful site is home to Ecosystem Sciences
and the Darwin Science Education Centre.
About 30 staff, students and industrial trainees
are currently based in Darwin.
We also share our site with the N.T Government's Flora and Fauna Division,
the Parks and Wildlife Commission's Wildlife Management Group,
and the Tiwi Land Council.
So what do we do up here?
Well, our mission is to conduct
integrated ecological and socio-economic research
to underpin sustainable land management
and regional development in the north.
Our research focuses on four major areas:
Firstly, Savanna burning.
This work looks at the full range of biophysical and socioeconomic issues
relating to savanna fire management for biodiversity
conservation and Greenhouse gas abatement,
especially on Aboriginal lands.
Our fire research underpinned one of the first methodologies approved under the
Carbon Farming Initiative
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in northern Australia.
Secondly, Indigenous natural resource management.
[CSIRO staff member talking with an Aboriginal woman]
CSIRO has strong and productive partnerships with
Aboriginal communities right across the Top End.
This work includes fire management, invasive species management,
aquatic resource conservation, biodiversity monitoring,
and marine planning.
The development of a suite of calendars
of Indigenous seasonal knowledge
with six language groups across the north has been a recent highlight.
Thirdly, Invertebrate biodiversity.
The Darwin lab has internationally leading expertise in ants,
the world's dominant faunal group in terms of biomass and energy flow.
We hold the world's most extensive collection of Australian ants,
with nearly 6,000 species!
This collection supports most of the ecological
work done on ants in Australia.
We've has also been working on the ecology and management of pest ants,
such as the Yellow Crazy ant in Arnhem Land, for more than ten years.
Our ant biodiversity lab is also home to many of our students.
About 20 international students, mostly from France,
spend three to six months staying with us on-site
and working on a range of projects.
They make a vital contribution to our research capability.
Finally, Rangeland ecology.
Rangelands cover about 85% of the continent.
Pastoralism is the main land use but there's
increasing interest in new economic opportunities,
such as carbon sequestration.
We're also exploring opportunities for the development of the
northern beef industry to improve productivity and profitability.
We're lucky to have one of the largest and best preserved areas
of remnant tropical savanna woodland in the Darwin suburbs.
Our ten hectare patch of bush has been the focus of more than
40 collaborative research projects in the last 16 years.
So that's it from me --
thanks for joining me on the tour. We hope you now have a much
better understanding of what we do here
up in the Top End of the Northern Territory!
[Music playing]
