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Increasing the adoption of energy-efficiency measures (EEM) by households is one of the practical strategies to increase energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For the 3.24 million low-income households in Australia, partly due to their potentially disproportionately large waste of usable energy, there is a gap between the potential for energy efficiency through existing EEM and the actual energy-efficiency level. Many measures increase energy efficiency in buildings; however, barriers persist for such households to adopt these measures, of which limited research has yet to be conducted. In response, this study examines the relationships involved by a questionnaire survey of 212 low-income households in Australia, showing that financial barriers have the greatest influence followed by split incentive barriers, with the provision of information having no significant role to play. This paper contributes to filling the gap of limited energy-efficiency research involving low-income households, revealing the effect of energy-efficiency barriers on their adoption of EEM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change and associated processes can increase the occurrence of some natural hazards and threaten business operations. Therefore, it is widely recommended businesses respond to climate change and implement climate change adaptation. Worldwide, businesses make efforts towards climate change adaptation, but investigation on such efforts is still required. To partially fill this research gap, the paper explores businesses adaptation efforts in the Hunter Valley, Australia. The paper collects primary data from open-ended interviews to 10 representatives of local businesses and supporting organizations. The paper reveals that businesses interpret climate change in different ways. While some businesses are sceptical about climate change, others are aware of it and its impacts on everyday operations. Businesses therefore implement adaptation by integrating climate change into everyday operations and continuity planning. The paper also shows diverse interactions occurring between businesses and other local stakeholders such as governments and communities. Usually, higher government levels offer vague and limited support to businesses and inhibit their adaptive efforts. Meanwhile, interactions between businesses and City Councils can be both collaborative and fragmented. Some businesses also interact with local communities by disclosing information about their operations and response to climate change. The paper discusses these findings and provides conclusions under the form of recommendations for policy and research on Australian businesses and climate change adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Factors affecting fertilizer decisions made by grain growers are changing in the context of changing climatic conditions and growing volatility in global fertilizer and grain markets. To ensure sustainable development of grain industries in light of this uncertainty, research, development, extension, and adoption activities associated with growers' fertilizer decisions need to be focused on factors to which they are most sensitive. The aim of this paper is to understand the factors that have the greatest influence on grain producer's fertilizer strategies, how these factors have changed over recent years, and what is the relative importance of agronomic, socioeconomic, and logistical factors affecting these strategies. A telephone survey of 425 grain-growing businesses in Western Australia was conducted, and survey results were analyzed statistically. We show for the first time that grain growers' fertilizer decisions are most sensitive to agronomic factors (especially the amount and distribution of rainfall). Logistic factors (such as difficulties fertilizing increasing areas in short periods of time) are growing in influence as farm size, cropping areas, and the number of fertilizer applications within seasons increase. Fertilizer decisions have become less sensitive to socioeconomic factors over the last 10 to 15 years. To ensure sustainable development of grain production, research through to adoption activities should focus on agronomic issues (such as seasonal forecasting) and logistic issues (such as improving planning, organizational, and technical capacity for developing and implementing fertilizer strategies). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In February and March 2022, the eastern coast of Australia recorded an unprecedented amount of precipitation with extended floods and damages to properties amounting at least to AUD 2.3 billions. In this paper we use both reanalysis and observations to perform a statistical and dynamical attribution of this precipitation event to climate change. We define 1948-1977 as the counterfactual period and 1990-2019 as the factual one. The statistical attribution is based on fitting the generalized extreme value distribution for 3-days averaged precipitation annual maxima for the two periods, while the dynamical attribution aims at looking at the recurrence properties of sea-level pressure and geopotential height patterns in both periods. We find that the dynamics of the event consists in an unprecedented combination of several factors: a tropical atmospheric river, the presence of the Coral low pressure system and a blocking anticyclone offshore Eastern Australia. Our main finding is that no clear attribution statements can be made, both because of the unprecedented nature of this event, the lack of long high quality available data and the dependence of the results on the La Nina phase of El Nino Southern Oscillation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring is critical to gauge the effect of environmental management interventions as well as to measure the effects of human disturbances such as climate change. Recognition of the critical need for monitoring means that, at irregular intervals, recommendations are made for new government-instigated programs or to revamp existing ones. Using insights from past well-intentioned (but sadly also often failed) attempts to establish and maintain government-instigated monitoring programs in Australia, we outline eight things that should never be done in environmental monitoring programs (if they aim to be useful). These are the following: (1) Never commence a new environmental management initiative without also committing to a monitoring program. (2) Never start a monitoring program without clear questions. (3) Never implement a monitoring program without first doing a proper experimental design. (4) Never ignore the importance of matching the purpose and objectives of a monitoring program to the design of that program. (5) Never change the way you monitor something without ensuring new methods can be calibrated with the old ones. (6) Never try to monitor everything. (7) Never collect data without planning to curate and report on it. (8) If possible, avoid starting a monitoring program without the necessary resources secured. To balance our "nevers", we provide a checklist of actions that will increase the chances a monitoring program will actually measure the effectiveness of environmental management. Scientists and resource management practitioners need to be part of a stronger narrative for, and key participants in, well-designed, implemented, and maintained government-led monitoring programs. We argue that monitoring programs should be mandated in threatened species conservation programs and all new environmental management initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosystems are influenced by multiple drivers, which shape ecosystem state and biodiversity. In some ecosystems, interactions and feedbacks among drivers can produce traps that confine an ecosystem to a particular state or condition and influence processes like succession. A range of traps has been recognized, with one of these – "a landscape trap" first proposed a decade ago for the tall, wet Mountain Ash and Alpine Ash forests of Victoria, south-eastern Australia. Under such a trap, young flammable forest is at high risk of reburning at high severity, thereby precluding stand maturation, and potentially leading to ecosystem collapse. These young forests are more common because recurrent wildfire and widespread clearcutting have transformed historical patterns of forest cover from widespread old-growth with small patches of regrowth embedded within it, to the reverse. Indeed, approximately 99% of the montane ash ecosystem is now relatively young forest. Based on new empirical insights, we argue that at least three key inter-related pre-conditions underpin the development of a landscape trap in montane ash forests. A landscape trap has been sprung in these forests because the pre-conditions for its development have been met. We show how inter-relationships among these pre-conditions, leading to frequent high-severity fire, interacts with life history attributes (e.g., time to viable seed production) to make montane ash forests (e.g., which have been highly disturbed through logging and frequent fire) vulnerable to ecosystem collapse. We conclude with the ecological and resource management implications of this landscape trap and discuss how the problems created might be rectified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Future projections in austral winter characteristics of explosive extratropical cyclones (EECs) in three CORDEX Southern Hemisphere domains (Africa-AFR, Australia-AUS and South America-SAM) are investigated. The projections are obtained with a fine resolution (25 km) Regional Climate Model (RegCM4) within the CORDEX-CORE framework driven by three Global Climate Models (GCMs: HadGEM2-ES, MPI-ESM-MR and NorESM-1 M) under the RCP8.5 scenario. The cyclone database was obtained using a tracking scheme applied to 6-hourly mean sea level pressure fields and EECs are selected using the Sanders and Gyakum criterion. EECs represent ~ 13–17% of the total number of extratropical cyclones during austral winter in the ERA-Interim reanalysis (1995–2014), while both GCMs and RegCM4 ensembles underestimate this percentage. The frequency of EECs is projected to increase in AFR and in SAM domains at the end of the twenty-first century. However, the magnitude of the projected changes needs to be considered with caution because it is smaller than the underestimations in the frequency of EECs of both ensembles in the present climate. EECs in the future will be deeper and faster but with a shorter lifetime. Eady Growth Rate composites, when EECs reach the explosive phase, indicate a less baroclinic large-scale environment in the future. On the other hand, the intensification of precipitation associated with EECs in the future indicates an increase in the contribution of the diabatic processes acting to strengthen the local baroclinicity of the EECs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]