Plants

What treasures did we find at Ashmore Reef Marine Park?

At the edge of Australia’s continental shelf, in the Timor Sea, you’ll find Ashmore Reef Marine Park. 630 km north of Broome in Western Australia, it’s one of our most remote marine parks. We were part of the area's most comprehensive 'health checks'.

The sweet hum of songbirds

The origin of the world’s songbirds is a story that began close to home. Their special ability to detect the sweet taste of sugary food is a similar tale.

Celebrating our flowering giants

Climbing up an 80 m tower is all in a day's work for some scientists. Read how they've been watching over Australia's defining flora - eucalypts - as part of our land ecosystem observatory.

Celebration of life in the forests of Borneo

Timm Döbert spent three years working towards his PhD based in a research camp in Borneo’s lowland rainforests. It was a chance to study close at hand the human impact on a diverse ecosystem – and a privileged opportunity to marvel at the diversity of life on Earth. It’s also a photographer’s paradise. He and colleagues have shared with us some of their favourite images.

Arid springs: the hidden evolutionary cradles of Outback Australia

At the Edgbaston springs in Central Queensland, a precarious ecosystem unknown to science until 25 years ago, scientists are uncovering a treasure trove of species found nowhere else on the planet. Together with the springs ecosystems in other arid areas of the Great Artesian Basin, these species are revealing a fascinating evolutionary tale.

The rise of carbon dioxide—picking the winners in Australia’s forests

Finding out which trees will thrive under high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide is about to get faster and cheaper.

Tree coring: only a flesh wound?

We can extract a lot of information from core samples taken from trees, but we may risk the health of valuable trees doing so. How do we find a balance between research and conservation?

Surveying the Amazon of the Indo-Pacific

Researchers have estimated the number of tropical tree species, and it's likely to be between approximately 40,000 and 53,000. The Indo-Pacific region is as rich in tree species as tropical America.

Despite decades of deforestation, the Earth is getting greener

A new investigation of satellite records reveals that the Earth is getting greener, despite ongoing deforestation in Indonesia and South America.