Planting trees on farm: implications for biodiversity and natural capital

South Coast NRM facilitated this webinar held on Wednesday, 25 September 2024, to explore how tree planting on farms impacts biodiversity indicators, including threatened species habitat, and looking at examples of farm level natural capital accounts.
These exciting new results emerge from the farm systems modelling undertaken through the Australian Wool Innovation BENEFITS project and Meat & Livestock Australia's Carbon Storage Partnership.
One of the interventions modelled on 14 sheep & cattle properties across Australia was the impacts of planting 10% of farm area to native vegetation. This intervention, modelled at 10% for consistency across farms, gives a good indication of the scale of impacts tree planting can have on biodiversity, natural capital, and greenhouse gas emissions.
The webinar also considers how climate, environmental and agricultural information can be usefully monitored through natural capital accounts.
Speakers:
• Professor Matthew Harrison, Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture at the University of Tasmania in Launceston. Matt leads the Sustainable Pathways to CN30 project team, part of the Carbon Storage Partnership.
• Dr Karel Mokany, a Senior Research Scientist in the Macroecological Modelling team at CSIRO in Canberra.
• Dr Anthony O’Grady, a Senior Principal Research Scientist in the Environment Unit of CSIRO based in Hobart.
• Facilitator: Suzannah Macbeth, extension coordinator for Sustainable Pathways, based at South Coast NRM in southern Western Australia.